24th January 2005 Hoyle committee meeting room 11.30 - 13:00 Present: PSB, JRL, MR, RGM, MJI, DWE, WJS Apologies: STH, EGS Agenda ------ 1. Actions from last meeting 2. Comments on WFAU minutes 3. Task list for 2005Q1 4. Report on recent JAC telecon 5. WFCAM commissioning update 6. Status of ESO FDR RIXs 7. Status of Data Centre Archives (onlining AAT archive) 8. APM building news 9. AOB - CASU grant review - VEGA grant - VDUC meeting Minutes ------- 1. Actions from last meeting MJI has made no further progress in comparing the FIRES project reduced data with ours - ongoing <<<< JRL has solved the ZPN WCS problem in IRAF. This has been implemented on apm6,7,8,9, but not yet on Solaris. It will get a wider release once it has had a bit more testing. WJS has talked to ATC regarding the issue of combining the two guide star data streams. The hardware will cope with this, but it will require a software request. This currently has less priority than something else - I've forgotten what. RGM contacted EGS regarding missing items in the revamped INT WFC web pages and these have now been sorted out. EGS needs to make sure INT WFC products database access is advertised on wfcsur web pages - ongoing <<<< MJI has produced and distributed bound copies of the latest grant bid DWE has explained our web set up to MR and shown him around STH has updated and submitted the ETC document to ESO PSB sent the data dictionary files to JMS STH has not (as far as we know) generated a pretty picture from the WFCAM data so that we can use it for advertising - ongoing <<<< MJI have drawn up a quarterly job list and circulate it for comments STH STH has not contacted Paul Hirst (and a suitable person at Edinburgh) so that the CASU link goes to our VDFS web page rather than our group home page - ongoing <<<< DWE added a WFCAM logo and link to the bottom of our VDFS web pages MJI has made a start on updating the CASU group web pages entry point - ongoing <<<< EGS it is not known what progress has been made on the calibration of large WFS surveys - ongoing <<<< STH has not created an internal web page to keep track of our various RAID arrays etc. - ongoing <<<< ALL updated their absences files PSB sorted out the Acrobat 7.0 stuff RGM passed on the information regarding a free PDF writer. Sadly, this was a Windoze-based product, not Linux/Unix. 2. Comments on WFAU minutes While the issue of data policies was being discussed, the transfer of data from CASU to ESO was raised. JRL reminded us that the plan was to push the data to ESO and that the relevant piece of code had been sent from ESO. However, this has not been installed/tested yet. MR was volunteered to carry on with this task and JRL will pass on the relevant information. <<<< The header problems encountered at WFAU were noted. These were mainly to do with the files generated at commissioning being non-standard (eg. no TCS on telescope to start with). It was pointed out that CASU was responsible for verifying the FITS headers, but not fixing them. The FITS headers should be correct on leaving JAC. There was some discussion on what was valid within FITS (eg blank lines). The EQUINOX keyword and ICRS was raised again. Although not relevant to ICRS it is understood why this keyword is still used. It was suggested that the comment field could be used to state that the equinox was not needed for the ICRS. 3. Task list for 2005Q1 Various aspects of the task list were discussed. It was noted that the next VDMT meeting would be on either the 3rd or 4th of February. 4. Report on recent JAC telecon MJI reported on the telecon held on 14 January. The planned schedule is for WFCAM to be on sky about 3 March with a contingency shutdown scheduled for 10-23 March. It is unknown whether the contingency will be needed. If not, some real observing will be carried out. Paul Hirst (PH) is trying to deconstruct the outputs from the electronics to see where the banding (curtain effect) originates. PH explained the differential (wrt time) nature of crosstalk in terms of its physical origin. No explanation was available as to why Chip 2 is different. For the next set of commissioning it is expected that JRL will go out to Hawai'i for 2 weeks on 2/3 March with STH going for 1 or 2 weeks on about 28 March (working on photometry with Sandy Leggett). (AA's dates were 4/5 March and 29 March?) DWE said that the CASU absences page can now be seen by JAC. The next telecon will be 26 January. 5. WFCAM commissioning update JRL reported on some results since the meeting with Simon Dye. It looks like the dark frames are stable over a timescale of about a week if the readout mode is CDS and the exposure time is longer than 10s. He also pointed out that that these are really reset anomaly frames since the dark current contribution is very small. The glowing blob (scale 30 pixels) on chip 2 varies over a night. Could this be a function of temperature? The current investigations are continuing with the dark frames and investigating the stacking of frames over 4 nights in order to create a sky flat. The next task was non-linearity. MJI said that he would prefer a higher priority given to this task. MJI said that his report on the astrometry and photometry calibrations has been released on the web. (http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~wfcam/docs/reports/commissioning/index.html) These calibrations have been carried out using 2MASS. The astrometry is good to 1" (before tip/tilt) and it looks like monitoring sky conditions using 2MASS calibrations will be feasible. However, MJI reported that the images were significantly elliptical. 6. Status of ESO FDR RIXs PSB said that by Friday 82 RIXs had been received and some more have arrived this morning. They can be normally be split into three categories: points of procedure; political and trivial. PSB and MJI said that they would deal with as many as possible in order to help the work load of JRL. By mid-week an ASCII list of the RIXs and assigned person would be created. <<<< 7. Status of Data Centre Archives (onlining AAT archive) Progress has been fine until recently. On Friday the DVD tower froze and cass36 has also been having problems. The plan is to have the AAT archive online by the time of the grant review. 8. APM building news MJI said that the official completion date is 11 February, so it looks like we will be moving in the last week of February or a bit later. 9. AOB - CASU grant review This is likely to be held on 11 February here in Cambridge. - VEGA grant We have been successful with this grant which covers a number of CASU until September 2007. - VDUC meeting This will be on 21 February in Edinburgh. MJI and JRL will be likely attendees. RGM raised the issue of NAM and whether we should have a presence at it. This will be in Birmingham 4-8 April. The abstract deadline is 14 February and the registration deadline is 14 March. There is a parallel session on the Thursday entitled "New astronomical instrumentation" which might be suitable. MJI will have a think about this. <<<< WJS reported on a FMOS meeting he had attended in Oxford. This will be working by the end of this year. There was discussion on the formation of a UK consortium similar to UKIDSS. Continuing Actions ------------------ MJI continue with comparing FIRES project reduced data by further testing of a CASU seeing-weighted stacking procedure EGS make sure INT WFC products database access is advertised on wfcsur web pages STH generate a pretty picture from the WFCAM data so that we can use it for advertising (by the end of February or sooner) STH contact Paul Hirst (and a suitable person at Edinburgh) so that the CASU link goes to our VDFS web page rather than our group home page MJI finish updating the CASU group web pages entry point EGS calibrate the large WFS surveys (I don't know if this is an action or more of a work task?). STH make an internal web page describing our disk resources New Actions ----------- MR install and test the ESO code for pushing WFCAM data over to ESO JRL PSB Deal with as many RIXs as possible MJI MJI Consider what CASU presence might be needed for NAM 2005.