8th June 2004 Obs meeting room 12.00 - 13:30 Present: JRL, PSB, MJI, DWE, WJS, STH, RGM (& Paul Hirst visiting from JAC) Agenda ------ 1. Actions from last meeting 2. Comments on WFAU minutes 3. JAC telecon 4. UKIRT board meeting 5. MSB design issues 6. CASU job applications (closing date was 31st May) 7. APM building news 8. AOB Minutes ------- 1. Actions from last meeting STH has made no progress regarding the spatial systematics in the UFTI standards data and new test data. STH said that it should only take about an afternoon to do. Ongoing. <<<< There was a small discussion regarding extinction and how to deal with this. This is a work package, so no action was noted. MJI no progress on comparison of FIRES project reduced data with ours - still ongoing <<<< MJI have written and submitted their paper for SPIE Glasgow. All three papers JRL related to VDFS (overview, pipeline and archive) can be found in STH http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~wfcam/internal/papers/ These will be given on Friday 25 June. ALL sent in their monthly reports. The VDMT meeting will be later this afternoon. STH have given Simon Dye access to the FIRES data. MJI DWE have added links on our web pages to the JAC on-sky characterization STH and WFCAM web pages. ALL only a few minor comments were passed on to MJI regarding Andy Adamson's WFCAM Survey Operations web page (it having covered most stuff). Steve Warren and Simon Dye will be visiting Cambridge tomorrow to have a meeting with Paul Hirst where this will be discussed further. STH sent in comments on Oxford meeting minutes. JRL has started drafting a more detailed list of the functionality required in CPL/QFITS. He said that he was halfway there. Ongoing <<<< MJI obtained figures from Paul Aslin regarding the CASU grant-line since 1998. STH obtained costings for upgrade of Observatories Meeting Room facilities PSB and had them ready for the DAC. STH and RGM reported that the need for a better meeting room in the Obs building was agreed. It looks like the long term plan will be to move the meeting room to Library Room H. Most of the changes requested were agreed, but might take some time due to having to consider the long term plan. Regarding the details: Projector: fine, but not fixed to the ceiling (listed building) Tables: to have a number of small tables cf. Hoyle Committee Room Wireless: there seem to be a number of security issues with this that might cause delays. 2. Comments on WFAU minutes It was noted that Ian Bond is leaving Edinburgh. We wish him well in his new lecturing post. There was some discussion regarding what documents were required for the UK VDFS PDR (User Requirements Document + ?). It is probable that these would be required by August - a tight timescale. This would be further discussed at the VDMT meeting this afternoon. 3. JAC telecon The last JAC telecon was on 28th May. Paul Hirst reported on this (and provided further up-to-date information). The latest WFCAM news is that 2 engineering arrays are currently cold. The image quality (MTFs) is about a factor of 2 out of specification. However, the point source that is fed in is complex (due to having to mimic the telescope and corrector) so it is unclear whether the problems are with the simulator or the camera. There are some problems with the corrector plate. The measurement of the surface can only be done to ~100nm measuring error, but the specification is 40nm. They are trying to improve this by repeated measuring and think that the surface is probably good to about 90nm. This should be acceptable since other parts of the system are better than specified. The current approach is to put it in and see if it's good enough. All 4 science grade arrays are at 90K (but not in the camera). The linearity of these chips are within 1% to 90% of full well. One of these arrays has a problem in that 1 channel is suppressed. This could caused by a minor wiring problem. This can't be checked at the moment since they don't want to bring the array to room temperature yet. There has been some hiatus recently regarding the Data Acquisition System, but all should be fine now. There is a large amount of noise on the autoguider which is thought to be caused by a long cable. Work is going on in trying to shorten this and hopefully solve the problem. The cool-down issues are being discussed between Rockwell and Edinburgh. The two possible causes for the problems are cooling pins (although more than the minimum were being used previously, they are now all being used) and the ZIF sockets. The chips are now not being inserted all the way into the sockets (using plastic shims which are then removed). Although there is now a gap, there are no alignment issues linked to this procedure. MJI asked who should be carrying out the non-linearity correction and Paul replied that this should be done by the DAS. The acceptance test for WFCAM will be next week. 4. UKIRT board meeting MJI and Nigel Hambly attended the UKIRT board meeting on 25th May in Durham and gave some presentations. They were well received and they raised some issues that had not been realized by some of the board members previously. 5. MSB design issues CASU and JAC provided some guidelines for MSB design and there followed a meeting in Oxford of the UKIDSS survey heads to come up with a draft design. GPS, DXS and GCS have sent in a response. LAS and UDS have not. The two main issues were offset skies and random dithering. DXS wanted random dithering, but didn't realize that this would not be possible due to the design of the autoguider and availability of guide stars. They still want dithering as random as possible. 6. CASU job applications (closing date was 31st May) There were 7 applications with 3 from astronomical backgrounds. A short list list needs to be drawn up by the end of the week so that interviews can be arranged. <<<< 7. APM building news MJI reported that last week he and PSB attended a meeting with Estate Management and the architects (?). There has been a suggestion (from George and Gerry) that the building change its name to the CASU building. While there was a general feeling that it should remain the APM building, MJI has suggested the compromise of the CASU/APM building. Current costings are £190k from the IoA and £170k from Estate Management. The current plans have been iterated but weren't shown. There was a bit of concern that the open plan scheme would resurface by stealth, so it was important that MJI and PSB get invited to the next meeting. The current timescale is that they start on 6th September and finish 3.5 months after this (just before Christmas). This assumes no problems with the planning authority stage. The only issue is that there should be no damage to the trees. This means that no big crane can be used for the roof which will have to be installed in sections. 8. AOB. There have been a number of drafts of JPE's document on Martin Folger's job description (some of CASU were involved in providing comments). PSB was asked to place the latest version in internal. <<<< There will be a PPARC data curation review on 10th June for which JRL will be giving a presentation. RGM and MJI said that they will provide some input for this. <<<< Continuing Actions ------------------ STH finish looking at the spatial systematics in the UFTI standards data and new test data. This needs to be bumped up even more on the STH priority list! MJI compare FIRES project reduced data with ours JRL finish detailed list of the functionality required in CPL/QFITS New Actions ----------- ALL? help draw up a short list for the new CASU post PSB place Martin Folger's job description document on our internal web pages. RGM provide some input to JRL for his presentation to the PPARC data curation MJI review