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We describe the photometric data set assembled from the full six years of observations by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) in support of static-sky cosmology analyses. DES Y6 Gold is a curated data set derived from DES Data Release 2 (DR2) that incorporates improved measurement, photometric calibration, object classification and value added information. Y6 Gold comprises nearly $5000~{\rm deg}^2$ of $grizY$ imaging in the south Galactic cap and includes 669 million objects with a depth of $i_{AB} \sim 23.4$ mag at S/N $\sim 10$ for extended objects and a top-of-the-atmosphere photometric uniformity $< 2~{\rm mmag}$. Y6 Gold augments DES DR2 with simultaneous fits to multi-epoch photometry for more robust galaxy shapes, colors, and photometric redshift estimates. Y6 Gold features improved morphological star-galaxy classification with efficiency $98.6\%$ and contamination $0.8\%$ for galaxies with $17.5 < i_{AB} < 22.5$. Additionally, it includes per-object quality information, and accompanying maps of the footprint coverage, masked regions, imaging depth, survey conditions, and astrophysical foregrounds that are used for cosmology analyses. After quality selections, benchmark samples contain 448 million galaxies and 120 million stars. This paper will be complemented by online data access and documentation., Comment: Data products and documentation are publicly available at https://des.ncsa.illinois.edu/releases

Radio wave scattering can cause severe reductions in detection sensitivity for surveys of Galactic and extragalactic fast ($\sim$ms duration) transients. While Galactic sources like pulsars undergo scattering in the Milky Way interstellar medium (ISM), extragalactic fast radio bursts (FRBs) can also experience scattering in their host galaxies and other galaxies intervening their lines-of-sight. We assess Galactic and extragalactic scattering horizons for fast radio transients using a combination of NE2001 to model the dispersion measure (DM) and scattering time ($\tau$) contributed by the Galactic disk, and independently constructed electron density models for the Galactic halo and other galaxies' ISMs and halos that account for different galaxy morphologies, masses, densities, and strengths of turbulence. For source redshifts $0.5\leq z_{\rm s}\leq1$, an all-sky, isotropic FRB population has simulated values of $\tau(1\rm~GHz)$ ranging from $\sim1~\mu$s to $\sim2$ ms ($90\%$ confidence, observer frame) that are dominated by host galaxies, although $\tau$ can be $\gg2$ ms at low Galactic latitudes. A population at $z_{\rm s}=5$ has $0.01\lesssim\tau\lesssim300$ ms at 1 GHz ($90\%$ confidence), dominated by intervening galaxies. About $20\%$ of these high-redshift FRBs are predicted to have $\tau>5$ ms at 1 GHz (observer frame), and $\gtrsim40\%$ of FRBs between $z_{\rm s}\sim0.5-5$ have $\tau\gtrsim1$ ms for $\nu\leq 800$ MHz. Our scattering predictions may be conservative if scattering from circumsource environments is significant, which is possible under specific conditions. The percentage of FRBs selected against from scattering could also be substantially larger than we predict if circumgalactic turbulence causes more small-scale ($\ll1$ au) density fluctuations than observed from nearby halos., Comment: 27 pages, 16 figures, accepted to ApJ