7th February 2008 Hoyle Committee Room 10:00-12:20 (with coffee break) Present: STH, PSB, MJI, EGS, MR, NAW, RGM Apologies: DWE, JRL, RWA Agenda ------ 1. Actions from last meeting 2. Comments on WFAU minutes 3. Recent meetings/visits 4. Data archives update 5. Optical processing update 6. WFCAM news 7. VISTA news 8. ADASS 2007 9. AOB Minutes ------- 1. Actions from last meeting MR has put illumination correction information on web pages and STH has cross-linked to technical photometry pages and generally updated that section STH has not checked the advertized illumination correction information yet and will update the relevant section in the calibration paper when that is done. The plan is to use LAS overlaps for the tests. Details will be included in the paper and on the web site - ongoing <<<< MR performed backup verification test using old LTO tapes and found no problems ALL have not yet provided comments on photometric calibration paper. STH hopes to get this finished by the end of the month (subject to how difficult the illumination correction checking turns out to be) - ongoing <<<< JRL still checking why pipeline catalogue software and toolkit give different results in a few specific cases - ongoing <<<< JRL drafted letter of support regarding future of UKIRT/UKIDSS and circulated it within group and sent it off STH fedback comments on Plone/HTML websites JRL replied to EVO questionnaire before 20 January deadline JRL implemented decurtaining modification as an option for use in reprocessing STH has updated the plone pages (technical: catalogues generation) to add a howto for using the WCS keywords - including some example perl to convert X, Y pixel values to RA, DEC. MJI to check. <<<< JRL finalise and issue VIRCAM linearity report - done at end of meeting ALL reviewed printed copy of ADASS 2007 proceedings by end of January ALL contributed to presentations for grant review STH have reviewed possible involvement in the PLATO assessment study MJI and communicated their interest to UK coordinator Ian Roxburgh 2. Comments on WFAU minutes UKLIGHT: PSB met MSH and ETWS at ATC post CASU STFC review and had a useful discussion. Meanwhile, CASU finally got an account on djedefre; in summary the main bottleneck seems to be appalling write performance to the NAS boxes, but a number of probably less important issues have also been identified. Thanks to Mark for pushing this forward. Hopefully this will all pay off in a significant performance increase in the near future. 3. Recent meetings/visits There was a VDMT meeting Monday 21st Jan. MJI recalled a comment by JPE about availability of filter transmission curve(s) for the Z and N118 filters and was actioned to procure these to expedite completion of the ESO ETC technical spec deliverables. <<<< The rolling grant review took place in Edinburgh on Tuesday 22nd Jan - presentations are available for perusal and the grant application has been placed on the public web pages. MJI pointed out an upcoming UltraVISTA science and technical (software) meeting in Leiden in March that he and JRL will be attending (in part). 4. Data archives update Tapes: All the ING dat tapes in the SPO have been disposed of. The early archive tapes containing back-ups of APM data, for instance, have been moved to a metal cupboard in the link area. This cupboard also contains the latest WFCAM DLT tapes - the remainder of the collection is in the Obs Meeting Room cupboard. The longer term plan to to use two of these large metal cabinets for backup tape storage. Plate collections: The Norman Lockyer plates are now at Sidmouth. The Cambridge solar disk plates and photographic prints were delivered to RAL last week. The Kodaikanal plates will be boxed and sent to India on receipt of the right documentation from IAA. An estimate of the cost of producing 12 crates each of which will contain 100 kg of plates, and air freighting to Bangalore has been made. The packers will require payment 7 days before collection. We have a taker for the POSS plates and the film sky surveys. Staff from the Sternwarte Hohenkarpfen in southern Germany will make two trips in April with a van to remove the material which is in the link area and at Laundry Farm. AAT: up to date ING: transfers continue seemlessly as usual. Data to the end of January 2007 has been checked. WFCAM: most of the remaining week or so of 07B data has been ftp'd - still awaiting bits (ie. detector #3 data for last 3 nights). UKIRT: The latest load of UKIRT Cassegrain data has been ftp'd across. A few nights had corrupted data (not the fault of FTP) and AJA will recreate the relevant tar files. The sdf->fits conversion is underway prior to the data being merged into the archive. The UKIRT cass archive is due for backup again. >>>> 5. Optical processing update No optical processing news per se, but it was noted that this topic needs generalising to include other NIR processing. STH and RGM are both interested in the HAWK-I SV data and JRL is investigating processing it. MJI is interested in some WIRCAM data and is awaiting shipment of it from CFH. 6. WFCAM news WFCAM Networking: Progress is gradually being made on setting up automated network transfer of raw WFAM data to CASU via the Internet. It is hoped a direct benefit will be to shave a couple of weeks off delivery of science products though more robust protocol need to be in place before this happens. Most of the remaining WFCAM data for 07B has been transferred via the internet, bar the last 3 nights of detector #3. The expected UKIDSS wishlist was discussed: the decurtaining aspect of the background artefacts problem has already been addressed and solved, though it will be run as a reprocessing option rather than blind, since for normal data it makes the background slighty worse; a possible solution for the point-source detection and parameterisation issue in regions of complex nebulosity has been derived and tested, and is currently awaiting feedback from Phil Lucas; much email exchange on sky estimation strategy for offset skies has ensued with two general modes on the table - nodding between detectors which has the advantage of efficiency, and nodding en masse to another patch of sky, the trick with both is make the stratgey (and possible observer interference) transparent to the pipeline; elliptical apertures for galaxy photometry is an old story and possibly the best solution is simply to make the 3 galaxy photometry measures (Petrosian, Kron and Hall) have elliptical apertures matched to the ellipticty and PA defined by the intensity-weighted second moments (modulo noise protection for faint images), MJI will check what SDSS folk do; >>>> optional full iterative PSF model fitting and Sersic profile fitting as in long term development plans, in practice contingent on grant review outcome. 7. VISTA news VISTA: PSB also met up with SMB and NL at ATC post CASU STFC review and had useful discussions with both though he noted that "we" were still collectively unsure how the RECIPE keyword will actually make its way from user to FITS headers. A report on linearity based on Jul 2007 VIRCAM data, which achieved a very limited circulation, has been updated including some information gleaned from the brief October 2007 data set that could be used for flatfielding tests, and was circulated at the end of this meeting. It raises issues particularly with non-linearity, filter wheel positioning and the narrow band filter. An alpha release of CPL 4.1.0 was obtained from ESO which actually allows operation of the DRL with tile-compressed FITS files. Given the information-sparse content of much of the available data, compressing it saves enormously on disk space. The DRL has proved totally compatible with the new CPL. The possiblity of more cold camera test data was discussed with WJS when he was last up in Cambridge. We already have a wishlist of observations from the last run which are being updated in the light of recent results. MJI encouraged PSB to polish this off and send it to WJS and JPE for consideration. <<<< SMPs: a brief discussion about assorted aspects of the SMPs ensued triggered by the recent re-submission of the VVV SMP. RGM and MJI noted that we do not seem to have up to date copies of all of these (eg. VIKING) and were actioned to acquire the latest ones as necessary. <<<< Several people commented that it would be ueseful to get an up to date SADT to see what tiling patterns are going to be generated and how it interacts with P2PP etc.... 8. ADASS 2007 JRL has submitted a final budget to the POC and arranged for Ian Bell to transfer the remaining cash from IoA back to ADASS. He has also made a pass through the first printed version and RWA has made numerous editorial corrections. The main work now lies with producing the subject index. Once this is complete, JRL will write a preface and then a final printed version will be passed around the editors before going off to ASP. 9. AOB A quote for partition construction in the main APM room has now been received and given the go ahead. The build phase should last 3 weeks and in theory, at least, will not disrupt computer services in the building. PSB noted the upcoming IoA plans for installation of a 10 Gbit fibre backbone around the site which will require us in the near future to upgrade at least some of the network switches to 10 Gbit. PSB also requested that we consider purchasing a new colour printer to replace the current one. So he was tasked with pricing some options (at WLC) and comparing with the current one. Continuing actions STH checked the advertized illumination correction information using LAS for overlap tests ALL provide comments on photometric calibration paper by end of next week JRL check why pipeline catalogue software and toolkit give different results in a few specific cases New actions MJI check plone technical pages WCS howto MJI acquire transmission curves for VIRCAM Z and N118 filters JRL backup UKIRT cass archive MJI check what SDSS do about elliptical apertures PSB review and send off wishlist of observations for next cold VIRCAM run RGM check and acquire as necessary updated SMPs for VISTA public surveys MJI PSB investigate new colour printer options and report back at next meeting