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27th March 2007 Observatory Meeting Room 10:00 - 12:45
Present: DWE, STH, JRL, PSB, MR, MJI, EGS, RGM
Apologies: NAW, WJS
Agenda
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1. Actions from last meeting
2. Comments on WFAU minutes - UKLight saga update
3. VDMT meeting
4. Data archives update - AAT, ING, WFCAM, UKIRT
5. Optical processing update- IPHAS release
6. WFCAM news - raw data status
- processing status
- DR2
- photometric calibration update
- new WFCAM campaign proposals
7. VISTA news - delivery v0.5 pipeline
- test data from Paranal
- revised VISTA SMPs.
8. Gaia - Bologna meeting resum\'e
9. ADASS 2007 - latest
10. AOB - conference proceedings for ESO workshop
- cass38 resurrects yet again
- NAM (Preston, April 16-20)
- rolling grant application
Minutes
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1. Actions from last meeting
JRL is still awaiting a reply to his emails regarding the PostgreSQL
problems with the AAT archive - ongoing <<<<
MJI said that he would email Matthew Colless (AAT Director) to
push things along. <<<<
RGM has not finished working on the classification aspect of cross-talk
weeding. This work has started again (with help from EGS) since
the LAS DR2 data has now become available - ongoing <<<<
DWE has finished the synching of the VIRCAM documentation from cvs to
HTML and then to Plone. This also worked when the Plone system was
switched from apm25 to the backup machine apm26 as a test.
JRL has sorted out the OMP database problems after an exchange of emails.
EGS have not completed the ADASS 2007 registration web page since this is
MR not required until May. What is required is the preliminary announcement
page which is due 2nd April. Information is needed from the POC on the
programme emphasis - action changed <<<<
MR continues to investigate credit card payments for ADASS 2007. JRL said
that the university is not willing to help us set up a system and that
we will have to do this ourselves. A secure site will be set up (ADB is
confident about this) and Ian Bell will help with the administration.
At the moment various issues have been left with Paul Aslin - ongoing <<<<
PSB is in touch with someone local regarding wireless provision for ADASS
2007. If this fails, then we will have to use BT. <<<<
RGM has drafted an official complaint to UKERNA, but since things seem to
be progressing, it has not been sent off.
JRL has sorted out the cvs server previously on cass38.
MR set up a "pending" tag for appropriate nights on the data processing
page.
MJI has investigated the effect of the bright edge channel problem in
the processed data. This can cause a complex range of problems because
tke sky estimate is sometimes also affected and does generally impact
the science products. Some examples of this plus a brief summary of
known new features are available on the processing status web pages
under 06B known features - see http://casu.ast.cam.ac.uk/surveys-projects/
wfcam/data-processing/2006b-known-features/
STH distributed the DR3 photometric calibration task list to all
ALL did not send in any comments on above to STH (this was discussed later)
WJS was investigating adding field rotation flat field tests to integration
tests - ongoing <<<<
JRL is waiting for his phone call to be returned regarding his inquiry
about the previous providers of wireless services at Kensington Town
Hall - ongoing <<<<
MJI informed us that our secretarial support for ADASS 2007 was Elinor
Jenkins (she even knows about this!).
ALL sent in January/February reports to STH
MJI has contacted Paul Aslin about the CASU out-of-APM tape store. The plan
is to have 3 large locked cabinets located somewhere in the Observatory
building. PSB said that the location should be sorted out soon since
many people were eyeing up these locations.
2. Comments on WFAU minutes
UKLight saga update:
summarising assorted minutes and emails on this PSB said that most parts are
now in place. According to Dave Tinkler from UKERNA:
"Everything is in place on UKLight, I think we are just waiting for the
astronomy people at Edinburgh to connect their equipment to the UKLight node
at Edinburgh."
Once this has been done a commissioning phase can be entered and any
remaining problems identified and fixed.
3. VDMT meeting
A VDMT telecon was held on 9th March. MJI gave a brief report on the main
salient points.
The SMPs for the VISTA public surveys were discussed and it was noted that
telecons, meetings, and assorted email exchanges with the survey PIs will
take place throughout April to sort out the remaining details. Several of
the RIXs seem to be common to all the surveys.
MJI was actioned to ensure that the 0.5 DRL release went through JPE and JMS,
and it subsequently did.
The earliest date for a VDUC meeting will be May. This will be in
Edinburgh. RGM thought that it would be a good idea for the PIs to be
invited to this meeting. The agenda is yet to be decided. However, it was
felt that an updated UK VISTA User Requirements Document should be a key
item for discussion. RGM said that he would email Tim Naylor, JPE and WJS
about this and the PI issue above. <<<<
The next VDMT meeting is scheduled for Friday 27 April.
4. Data archives update
AAT:
Nothing new to report.
ING:
A few tasks remain with the ING archive. The very oldest data needs to be
redistributed in order for the archive to get access to them. A few scripts
need to be converted to Linux. Some manual header updates will be carried
out by RWA from the observer logs. RWA will go to La Palma in order to
recover data from some of the oldest tapes that were written using VMS
Backup and require access to a VMS system to recover correctly (all 3rd
party software attempts having failed miserably).
WFCAM:
MR reported that 8 tapes have been received recently. This includes data up
to 5th March. These are still in the process of being ingested and verified.
Also further data has been received for detectors 2 and 3 for the period
October to December. Data is still missing for detector#1 for 5 nights in
January and 6 in February due to a tape writing problem. Thanks are due to
Brad for his efforts in getting this data to us.
There has been a request for raw WFCAM PI data from Durham which was all
handled automatically. We are curious to see how they get on and will
contact them in a month if we do not hear sooner. <<<<
ESO:
The transfer of raw WFCAM data to ESO has been resumed. However, there
has not been as much UKIDSS data for 06B so far since a lot of the observing
has been for PI projects.
UKIRT:
JRL said that work on getting the UKIRT archive up-to-date is ongoing and
there has been some contact with AJA recently about this.
5. Optical processing update
IPHAS release:
EGS briefly described the new IPHAS database and reported that the release of
band-merged IPHAS data via AstroGrid will occur at the end of April. The
ingestion of the 500 million objects is still ongoing. He is giving a talk
on this at the NAM 2007 meeting in Preston.
There was some discussion as to whether a press release should be written.
MJI noted that a large fraction of IPHAS project INT WFC data for detector#2
had been "corrupted" by a random intermittment gain change in the output
electronics for the latter half of October 2006 and all of November 2006.
He has devised and applied a correction scheme to recover the majority
of the affected data.
6. WFCAM news
Raw data status:
This was discussed under item 4.
Processing status:
MJI said that as we are processing the latest batch of data we are
encountering more problems than usual. This is partly because it contains
a higher proportion of PI data which tends to use more non-standard
observing parameters, but also is triggered by the inherent intermittent
faults. The occasional corrupted frame triggers a WCS faux pas, that gives
a technically valid but meaningless WCS. These are being investigated as
they arise.
In response to internal requests JRL pointed out that there was an internal
Plone page covering changes made to the pipeline. This can be found at:
http://casu.ast.cam.ac.uk/internal/wfcam-software-changes
DR2:
STH said that there are appear to be no problems with the application of the
photometric calibration. He added that the cross-identification with the Sloan
DR5 catalogue was a very nice feature. Congratulations are extended to the
WFAU team.
Photometric calibration update:
STH reminded us that there were 9 photometric calibration tasks that have to
be carried out before DR3. 3 of these were scheduled to be done by the end of
February, 3 by the end of March and the remainder and a final report by
mid-April. A paper would then be written from this.
A plot of the calibration of the Y offset was shown. Sloan colours were used
to select A0-like stars and after fitting a local gradient correction
an offset (~0.07mag) could be measured, via interpolation, to put the Y
calibration on the Vega system to within 2% (the requirement is 3%).
The equivalent data for Z is sparser but the offset appears to be less than
half that of the Y-band.
RGM asked about equivalent plots using 2MASS J-K since there is no Sloan in
the South for VISTA to use. STH said that the 2MASS colours do not give enough
leverage for accurate A0 selection but noted that he had used a similar method
before for directly calibrating from 2MASS.
MJI said that he has added an additional decimal place in the FITS headers
for the photometric calibration information (this was one of the actions
noted above). He will complete his investigation of the "illumination
correction" for WFCAM by generating a series of correction tables and plots
on a ~monthly basis (ie. tracking the flatfield updates).
STH finally added that an estimate of possible Eddington bias in the 2MASS
calibration needs further investigation. MJI noted that there is a simple
analytic check for this.
New WFCAM campaign proposals:
MJI said that there were 4 new proposals, the Transit Survey being one of
them. There has been no official feedback yet for the survey PIs.
Andy Adamson has discussed these with MJI and as far as we can tell there
are no new pipeline requirements arising from these proposals.
Other WFCAM topics:
The papers for the conference proceedings of the ESO calibration workshop
need to be submitted by the end of the week. These should be distributed
amongst the group today so that feedback comments can be made. <<<<
A faster link now exsits between Mauna Kea and JAC. This makes it worthwhile
to investigate further the possiblity of transferring data over the
Internet. A test of achievalbe bandwith is being set up.
7. VISTA news
Delivery v0.5 pipeline:
PSB reported that the delivery of the v0.5 pipeline was made on time through
JPE and JMS. This consists of the software, test data and the DRLD. There
has been an email from Colin Vincent congratulating us on this. The other
associated documents (cal, Instrument Data, ETC spec) are awaiting official
release.
There was some discussion regarding the "tickets" coming from ESO. Some of
these were expected such as ensuring v0.6 will cope with the recently
released new version of CPL. However, some are new requirements involving
design changes which may involve manpower issues.
Test data from Paranal:
There are 5 hot data frames available provided by the camera team in February.
The RAL team will be going out sometime soon and it may be possible to get
some more data. MJI will ask about this at the next VDMT meeting. <<<<
Other VISTA topics:
RIXes of the revised VISTA SMPs are starting to come in. As noted earlier,
several of the RIXs are common to all the surveys with one in particular
angling for more detailed assurances that CASU and WFAU will deliver
what they have "signed up" for. RGM noted that ultimately it would be the
responsibility of the PI to get the data processing and distribution done.
MJI commented on an email cc'd from JMS regarding the procurement of hardware
for the summit pipeline.
8. Gaia
Bologna meeting resum\'e:
DWE reported on the Gaia CU5 (Photometric processing) meeting held in
Bologna last week. Most of the meeting was about sorting out 2 documents
(design and requirements) and reports from the various Development Units.
Thus, it should seem very familiar to VISTA bods. The boundaries between the
DUs are fairly well determined. However, who will carry out the work for the
2d Image Reconstruction DU is still to be determined.
The next CU5 meeting will be in Leiden in September (the week before ADASS).
9. ADASS 2007
JRL said that apart from previously mentioned comments about the web site,
there was no additional news.
10. AOB
Conference proceedings for the ESO Calibration workshop:
MJI reminded us that the deadline is the end of the week, so if comments are
needed they have to be distributed soon.
cass38 resurrects yet again:
MJI said that cass38 had to be resurrected due to data backups not being
complete and some scripts being squirreled away there. It has now gone
off-line for hopefully the final time.
NAM (Preston, April 16-20):
MJI asked who was attending. Only EGS will be going. He will be giving an
AstroGrid presentation.
Rolling grant application:
MJI reminded us that our rolling grant application will need to be done
soon. Although no official date has been confirmed, it is likely to be in May.
This will cover the research part of our grants as well. STH was surprised
that this had come around so quickly again.
Marratech:
DWE encouraged members of the group to try out the Marratech video
conferencing system (see email). You don't need a username if you are just
trying out the public meeting room. To use the private rooms, you will need
a username (see Hardip Sanghera). If there is enough interest, a CASU
group and meeting room could be set up.
Continuing Actions
------------------
JRL repair AAT archive mirroring (PostgreSQL problems)
RGM report back on classification aspect of cross-talk weeding
MR sort out how ADASS 2007 credit card payments are to be made
PSB sort out wireless provision for ADASS 2007
WJS consider adding field rotation flat field tests to integration tests
JRL find out more about previous providers of wireless services at
Kensington Town Hall
New Actions
-----------
MJI email Matthew Colless (AAT Director) regarding lack of response from
AAT regarding AAT archive mirroring (PostgreSQL problems)
EGS prepare ADASS 2007 preliminary announcement web page by 2nd April
MR
RGM email Tim Naylor, JPE and WJS to ensure that discussing the updated
UK User Requirements Document is part of the VDUC agenda
MR contact Durham group about raw WFCAM data progress (~end of April)
MJI distribute drafts of conference proceedings of ESO calibration
JRL workshop
MR
ALL comment on above drafts
MJI ask about obtaining more VISTA data at next VDMT meeting
