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13th September 2004  Hoyle meeting room 10.00 - 12:30

Present:   JRL, PSB, MJI, DWE, WJS, STH, JMI, RGM
Apologies: EGS

RGM also invited Nic Walton to the meeting.

Agenda
------

1.  Actions from last meeting
2.  Comments on WFAU minutes
3.  Report from VDMT meeting
4.  JAC update - pipeline scripts (for commissioning)
               - tape saga
               - revised on-sky characterization tests
5.  Status of RIX responses
6.  CPL QFITS -v- not
7.  The ETC document
8.  APM building work update
9.  AOB

Minutes
-------

1.  Actions from last meeting

MJI  has made no progress in comparing the FIRES project reduced data 
     catalogues with ours. It is unlikely that this will get done until 
     after the move out of the APM - ongoing                               <<<<

STH  has made no progress investigating MSBs. The PATT deadline is this
     week, so it will get done after that - ongoing                        <<<<

JRL  has investigated the WFCAM acceptance test data from the engineering
     array (obtained from Paul Hirst), but it did not contain much of use.
     JRL will try to acquire more science array data and will raise this 
     issue at the JAC telecon tonight.                                     <<<<

MJI  has found out that JPE has collated the RIX responses and passed them 
     on to Michele Peron. PSB was happy with this.
     
MJI  has instigated a RIX response telecon for Thursday (16 September) 
     see later item
	  
JRL  has finished updating the pipeline to more gracefully deal with 
     lack of fringe (or suitable flat) frames
     
JMI  has found some frames from the INT WFC observer logs that might be
     suitable to form updated master fringe frames.  It was decided to
     to wait until they are available on DVD here since they may not be
     fully suitable.

JRL  has finished building in the option of using local versions of 
     calibration catalogues in pipeline
     
PSB  has (with STH) written a draft Exposure Time Calculator (ETC) 
     document - see item 7
     
MJI  did send an LTO-I tape to JAC but the slow tape reading problem
     was solved anyway - see later
     
STH  will allocate a WP subtask for the next quarter to sort out the 
     documents needed for the UK VDFS review and review the style 
     requirements - ongoing until end of this quarter                      <<<<

JRL  has started writing the poster for the ADASS conference - ongoing     <<<<

ALL  sent in monthly reports to STH
     
WJS  will attend Herschel meeting (21-23 September) - ongoing              <<<<

     
2.  Comments on WFAU minutes

There were no comments


3.  Report from VDMT meeting

RGM pointed out that no action list from the VDMT meeting had been 
completed yet. 

STH reported that although we received our usual grilling at the meeting,
there were no serious problems and that reviewed progress was satisfactory.
He also noted that he had submitted some more EV statistics (including 
actual costs) to JMS at his request. 

Various points were raised (as requested). Michele Peron has been sent the
RIX response document for comment and JPE was reminded of the need to issue
the final version of this document.  A telecon has been arranged to discuss 
the RIX responses and PSB has sent out a suggested agenda for this meeting.

At the VDMT meeting JPE raised the possiblity of delaying the FDR 
currently scheduled for mid-December.  This suggestion was not well 
received at the CASU meeting. The consensus was that given the schedule
of other committments, particularly WFCAM commissioning in Feburary/March 
and the commencement of WFCAM operations March/April, having the ESO FDR
later was not desirable.  This matter will be discussed at the RIX reponse
telecon (see also CPL+QFITS item)

There was some discussion regarding the time and venue for this meeting. 
It was decided that PSB should book the Hoyle committee room for 1:30+ 
for Thursday (16th) afternoon.  He should also check with ADB about phone 
access in the committee room.                                              <<<<


4.  JAC update 

The next JAC telecon will be tonight.

- pipeline scripts (for commissioning)

JRL said that for commissioning, a bit more flexibility was required in the
pipeline recipes than for normal observing. Discussions with Paul Hirst (PH) 
at JAC are ongoing.

- tape saga

The solution to the slow LTO tape reading was to use "mt setblk=512" in this
case to set the hardware reading block size to that of the tape.  MJI
still cannot understand why the blocksize is set to 512 bytes rather than
the usual larger defaults of 10240 bytes, but .......  This solution had 
been uncovered by PH.  Interestingly this "mt" option is only available on 
Linux.  When asked how fast it went, MJI said "voom". In CASU units, 
1 voom = 50-100 Gbytes/hour depending on machine load.

- revised on-sky characterization tests

Even though there is currently no corrector, quite a lot of tests can still 
be done. During the period of engineering commissioning, a lot of science
array charactersation and some on-sky tests will be performed.  MJI
went through an email from PH which discussed the options.

Given the likely number of tasks that could be progressed, there was 
further discussion about whether it would be useful for JRL to go out to 
JAC for some suitable period probably toward the end of November.  
It would be far easier to provide and update processing recipes and tune 
the pipeline in situ.  Among other things JRL could help enable and carry 
out a full end-to-end test of the summit data processing system, tape
writing scripts and FITS verification and CASU can then use this data 
to shakedown the ingest and verification procedures in Cambridge.

This issue will be discussed further at the JAC telecon tonight.           <<<<

STH should send PH the list of photometric standards as soon as possible
(and integrate it into the WFCAM document) since it looks likely that 
these will be needed at some point in the first on-sky commissioning 
phase starting ~end of October.                                            <<<<

RGM asked if MSBs would be tested during the first commissioning period.
There was a mixed response as to how useful this would be. This will be
raised at tonight's telecon.                                               <<<<


5.  Status of RIX responses

PSB said that out of the 56 items about 7 need some serious drafting.
Because of this he would have preferred a face-to-face meeting rather 
than a telecon but was pleased this action was being progressed.

He pointed out that some of the templates might get changed since a way 
has been found of nesting the templates - this ties in with the request 
to rationalize the templates.

There was some discussion regarding the actionee list since PSB was 
concerned that someone (not necessarily the same person) has to look at 
each item and check that the changes are OK.


6.  CPL QFITS -v- not

JPE has a copy of the document. It was unclear whether he had forwarded 
this to Michele Peron. MJI will find out whether he has or not.  PSB was  <<<<
concerned that this document has already been released since it has been
updated slightly since.  

MJI asked if we could commit to using CPL+QFITS for the Garching pipeline.  
He pointed out the longer term advantages of doing this and noted that this
decision had to be made as part of the FDR.  JRL commented that we
could not commit to the current version of CPL+QFITS but that if the
changes we had requested were implemented (the alternative is to have a 
waiver to use CFITSIO and WCSTOOLS as external libraries) the additional
work to implement the standard pipeline in this way would not be too
prohibitive.


7.  The ETC document

As a starting point this rough first draft was fine but MJI noted that 
some of the maths imported into it was misleading, and needed improving.  
He, STH and PSB will discuss the document in order to correct and 
rationalise it.                                                            <<<<


8.  APM building work update

PSB and MJI have had a meeting with the architect, contractor, EMBS, and
Paul Aslin and Peter Weeks from the IoA.   The contractual start date will 
be 4th October with completion date the 28th Januray.  Prior to this,
starting 20th September, the internal partition stud walls will be removed 
to enable the APM machine and associated crane gear to be removed on 
the 24th September. 

As a consequence of this all occupants, their belongings and all the 
computer equipment must be out by the end of this week (17th). It is 
intended that the computers will be moved sometime Wednesday to Friday, 
depending on the weather. There was some discussion as to whether a van 
was needed. PSB, MJI and JMI will be the heavies and will look into this.  <<<<

On schedule, it was pointed out that the portable cooling unit for the 
relocated computers had just arrived.

MJI pointed out that there were assorted odds and ends of old furniture 
and spur shelving that will otherwise be skipped, if anyone is interested.

At some point there will be a farewell wake to say goodbye to the APM.
Initially this was scheduled for Friday, but it will now be deferred to 
the end of the week beginning 27 September.

As completion is expected on the 28th January, STH said that he was 
looking forward to buying PSB an expensive lunch.

MJI noted that each month there would be a review of progress meeting 
with the contractor, architects and EMBS.  He also pointed out that MTB 
would be attending the conference in Chicago (8th October) in honour of 
Ed Kibblewhite's 60th birthday.


9.  AOB

NAW gave a short update on AstroGrid deployment and pointed out that 
INT WFS from Cambridge (images and catalogues) had been connected to 
AstroGrid.

JRL was asked to lobby the IRAF people (either email or at the ADASS       <<<<
meeting) to incorporate the agreed FITS standard for the ZPN WCS
projection in IRAF.  This is one of the main complaints we get about
our data products.     

There was some discussion regarding Rice compression since NAW was not
familiar with this.  The reduction in access bandwidth that this enables 
(a factor of ~4) makes this a desirable feature for Astrogrid deployment 
of image data. It was suggested that the fact that the reduced data
from our pipeline would be Rice compressed should be given some prominence
in the ADASS poster.                                                       <<<<

WJS said that the VST meeting has now been postponed to the week 4-8th
October. This is due to the ESO deadlines having been changed. Letters of 
Intent are now required by the 15th October, while the final proposal 
deadline is the 15th January. He said that he had about 4 or 5 responses. 
STH suggested that he extend the email list to explicitly include the
VISTA and WFCAM consortia since not everyone is on the astrocommunity 
email list.                                                                <<<<

The first tranche of the AAT archive on DVDs is arriving soon, just in 
time for the move of the DVD tower.

There was a bit of a Gaia update from NAW and MJI. An activity update
for science committee has just gone in to PPARC with the same staff 
profile as in the VEGA proposal, but with some hardware requests also
included. In addition to the photometric reductions, this proposal 
would be responsible for the science alerts. This provides for development 
activity until 2010/11.

MJI said that the general CASU + VDFS operations grant bid has been 
deferred until the end of October so that it is in sync with Edinburgh.
This grant will notionally start from April 2005.

WJS mentioned two proposals that had requested UK funding.
These are for a collaboration on the Dark Energy Camera (which if funded 
will be at CTIO) and DarkCam, the deferred visible camera for VISTA. 


Continuing Actions
------------------

MJI  compare FIRES project reduced data catalogues with ours

STH  investigate GPS MSBs (and any others obtained via Simon Dye)

JRL  obtain science array test data and raise this issue at the JAC 
     telecon tonight

STH  allocate a WP subtask for the next quarter to sort out the documents 
     needed for the UK VDFS review and review the style requirements

JRL  finish writing the poster for the ADASS conference

WJS  attend Herschel meeting and report back at subsequent CASU meeting   

     
New Actions
-----------

PSB  book the Hoyle committee room for 1:30+ Thursday and check with ADB 
     regarding the phone

JRL  consider going out to Hawaii in November and raise the issue at
     the JAC telecon tonight

STH  send Paul Hirst the list of photometric standards and integrate it 
     into the WFCAM document

MJI  ask at tonight's telecon if MSBs would be tested during the first
JRL  commissioning period

MJI  find out if JPE has forwarded the CPL/QFITS document to Michele Peron

PSB  update/correct the ETC document and send draft to JPE
STH
MJI

PSB  organize van for computer move if needed, and move the computers

JRL  lobby the IRAF people to fix the WCS problem in IRAF

JRL  put Rice compression somewhere prominent on the ADASS poster

WJS  extend the email distribution list for the VST meeting