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9th October 2006 Hoyle Committee Room 13:30 - 14:50
Present: DWE, MJI, JRL, PSB, STH, EGS, RGM, WJS, MR
Agenda
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1. Actions from last meeting
2. Comments on WFAU minutes
3. Brief WFCAM update
4. Report from VISTA meeting
5. UK VDFS review
6. GAIA
7. AOB
Minutes
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1. Actions from last meeting
JRL has not implemented the fix to the problem with the UKIRT archive
(missing header information problem) - ongoing <<<<
STH has FTP'd the data for the supernova remnant image from Albert Zijlstra,
but this has to be combined to make a nice colour image and from that a
poster - ongoing <<<<
STH has not investigated the effects of stacking on the 2MASS/WFCAM
non-linearity comparison - ongoing <<<<
JRL has contacted AAT regarding the PostgreSQL problems so that he
can repair the AAT archive. Progress is being made - ongoing <<<<
EGS has made the new ING archive interface the default one. He showed the
latest statistics: over the last 2 weeks there have been 15 users, 10
of whom have made 37 requests in total. All of this has been without
human intervention.
MJI have not emailed the new WFCAM colour equations to DWE and JRL.
STH MJI has finished the investigations but some decisions on zero-point
offsets for the y- and z-bands need to be made by the Calibration
working group in order to produce the final numbers - ongoing <<<<
MJI noteded out that he would like this sorted out by the start of
06B data processing (ie. ~four weeks time). STH said he would sort
this out asap. <<<<
PSB have discussed a proposal for RECIPE keywords, and talked to SMB
JRL about it.
MJI
PSB has emailed WFAU to see what is happening regarding UKLight. From the
WFAU minutes we understand that there is a delay at the EUCS end and
that emails from higher up the food chain are being fired off.
MJI has emailed Omar Almaini to find out which extra UDS 05B nights need
reprocessing but has not yet received a reply. MR noted that 6-7
nights have already been reprocessed for UDS. MJI will find out more
at the UKIDSS meeting on Friday.
RGM has not finished working on the classification aspect of cross-talk
weeding - ongoing <<<<
JRL has not added a detection filter FWHM choice as a command line option of
the pipeline version of imcore - ongoing <<<<
PSB updated the ETC documentation regarding pawprints
JRL has emailed Sandra Castro to find out about the Paranal hardware
requirements and acquired a document describing it
JRL tested out the Plone site as if external user. DWE said that the
issues he raised have been dealt with.
ALL had not sent in quarterly reports to STH. These would be needed in
time for the UK Review - ongoing <<<<
2. Comments on WFAU minutes
All is quiet on the comments on the minutes front.
3. Brief WFCAM update
MJI said that all of 06A has now been checked and has been flagged for
copying as of 1st October. Much copying up to Edinburgh is happening.
Differential astrometric distortions as a function of passband have been
investigated and found to be significantly different eg. for K the r-cubed
distortion coefficient is -60 and for Z it is -44. This is as expected.
The corollary is that it is definitely worth updating the astrometric WCS
solution in the headers since the maximum systematic residual reduces by
more than a factor of two from ~100mas to significantly less than ~50mas.
This investigation was based on 2 weeks of 05B data with half a million
stars in the K analysis and ~150000 stars in the other bands. PSB wondered
how much data was being considered for doing the equivalent during VISTA
commissioning.
MJI added that the RA and declination columns in the catalogues were being
updated (by default) but that this should not be significant since these are
only stored as single-precision real numbers anyway (for dumb overlay
programmes) and should not be used for maximum celestial coordinate accuracy.
There was some discussion on how this, and related photometric calibration
updates, were going to be dealt with between CASU and the WFAU science
archive. RGM pointed out that SDSS used a separate calibration table
for this purpose.
DWE pointed out that the Plone technical pages on astrometry will need
updating. <<<<
MJI said that MR had a request from an Indian astronomer regarding
access to the processed data. Both MJI and MR thought that the processed
data release policy for world-wide access was ~12-18 months after general
UKIDSS access. However, after asking this of Ms. Google they were somewhat
surprised to find a completely different statement.
MJI reminded us that he would be attending the UKIDSS meeting in Nottingham
on Friday the 13th and would raise this matter there. <<<<
He also noted that various UKIRT new project Letters of Intent were being
circulated to those likely to interested. If anyone wants to be part of
the science exploitation of these projects talk with MJI. The deadline for
these proposals is 3rd November. WJS was curious about where the observing
time for these projects would come from.
4. Report from VISTA meeting (see orig for details)
PSB reported on the "very interesting and enlightening" VISTA commissioning
meeting he and WJS attended in Edinburgh on 5 and 6 October. They summarised
progress and the schedule for the: mirrors, telescope, and camera inc.
wavefront sensors.
Pipeline: There was some discussion about possible use of the VDFS pipeline
to help with some of the commissioning tasks and how CASU members could best
contribute relevant expertise for these.
Summit pipeline hardware: ESO are writing the specification for this. PSB
was worried about the lack of urgency in starting the procurement process,
which he thought might compromise the goal of having all of the
infrastructure in place for VIRCAM first light (let alone camera checkout).
Generator: this is turned off at night when requested by the VLT operators,
which could lead to an interesting commissioning schedule.
MJI asked about the latest VISTA schedule since this would probably be
required for the UK Review. PSB said he would request the current official
schedule in time for the review. <<<<
MJI also asked about the new read mode. WJS said that this would be
available and configurable on-the-fly, but would need corresponding dark
frames and, presumably, further testing during commissioning.
5. UK VDFS review
All the CASU and WFAU documents required for the review were "delivered"
on time. At the recent VDMT meeting an action was placed on MJI and NCH to
ask members of their teams to read each others set of documents. After
some discussion of this at the VDMT this was narrowed down to 3 primary
documents, which for WFAU iare: VDF-WFA-VSA-002; -004; -006. The link to
the WFAU documents can be found on http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/vdfs/ukreview/
It is hoped that we can have a CASU/WFAU/VDMT meeting on the Monday
afternoon/evening before the review in order to coordinate our efforts. We
are expecting 3-4 people from WFAU to attend.
The meeting will start at 10:30am on the Tuesday with coffee ready from
10am. The meeting is scheduled to finish at 3:30pm, or thereabouts, on
Wednesday.
STH asked who should sit in on the review from CASU. MJI said that this
would depend on what questions had been asked and what format the discussion
ended up taking, but that anyone who wanted to sit through the whole review
was welcome.
MJI reminded us that there would be a meal on the Tuesday evening, but the
venue was still to be decided. MJI asked for ideas for a suitable venue. <<<<
The only comment that had been received so far was what happened to
VIS-SPE-IOA-20000-0003 ? This has been superceded by the DRLD
(VIS-SPE-IOA-20000-0010) as proscribed by 1618 (issue 2.0).
6. GAIA
MJI noted that there was a Gaia meeting tomorrow at 11:30 and all who were
interested in a role in the software development needed for GAIA photometric
data processing were advised to attend.
7. AOB
Power cut: there were no problems with the CASU machines from the recent
scheduled weekend-long power cut.
PSB, JRL, EGS and MR said that they would be off to ADASS on Saturday.
STH noted he was off observing at KPNO from Thursday. DWE is away on hols
from Wednesday for a long week. This leaves MJI to mind the shop until
Monday 23rd.
JRL said that he had found a new venue for the ADASS 2007 conference dinner
- The Globe Theatre. We will still have a boat ride.
Continuing Actions
------------------
JRL finish the fix to problem with UKIRT archive (missing header information)
STH generate poster of supernova remnant image received from Albert Zijlstra
STH investigate effects of stacking on 2MASS/WFCAM non-linearity comparison
JRL repair AAT archive mirroring (PostgreSQL problems)
MJI email new WFCAM colour equations to DWE and JRL
STH
RGM report back on classification aspect of cross-talk weeding
JRL add detection filter FWHM choice as command line option of pipeline
version of imcore.
ALL send quarterly reports to STH
New Actions
-----------
STH agree new WFCAM colour equations with Calibration working group
DWE update Plone technical pages on astrometry
MJI
MJI raise issue of UKIDSS data release policy at Nottingham meeting
PSB request latest official VISTA schedule for use in UK Review
ALL suggest suitable venue for UK Review meal (La Paloma, Tucson does
not count)
