RAIL: Redshift Assessment Infrastructure Layers
RAIL is a flexible open-source software library providing tools to produce at-scale photometric redshift data products, including uncertainties and summary statistics, and stress-test them under realistically complex systematics.
Start Here
If it’s your first time using RAIL, this is where to go for the basics.
User guide
The basics of how RAIL works and what you should know.
Interactive Usage
How to interactively use RAIL on your own computer
Pipeline Usage
How to build RAIL pipelines for use on larger computer systems
Interactive Example Notebooks
Example Jupyter notebooks for using RAIL in interactive mode
Pipeline Example Notebooks
Example Jupyter notebooks for using RAIL in pipeline mode
RAIL serves as the infrastructure supporting many extragalactic applications of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, including Rubin-wide commissioning activities. RAIL was initiated by the Photometric Redshifts (PZ) Working Group (WG) of the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) as a result of the lessons learned from the Data Challenge 1 (DC1) experiment to enable the PZ WG Deliverables in the LSST-DESC Science Roadmap (see Sec. 5.18), aiming to guide the selection and implementation of redshift estimators in DESC analysis pipelines.
RAIL is developed and maintained by a diverse team comprising DESC Pipeline Scientists (PSs), international in-kind contributors, LSST Interdisciplinary Collaboration for Computing (LINCC) Frameworks software engineers, and other volunteers, but all are welcome to join the team regardless of LSST data rights. To get involved, chime in on the issues in any of the RAIL repositories described in the Overview section.