18th May 2009 APM Meeting tables 11:30-13:00 Present: MJI, JRL, STH, SC, RWA Apologies: NAW, MR, EGS Agenda ------ 1. Actions from last meeting 2. Comments on WFAU minutes 3. Recent and upcoming meetings 4. Data archives update - AAT, ING, WFCAM, UKIRT 5. Optical/NIR processing - HAWKI, INT WFC, MegaCam, Subaru 6. WFCAM update 7. VISTA update 8. AOB - rolling grant status etc.. Minutes ------- 1. Actions from the last meeting STH PLONE pages. Sky subtraction and dribbling texts have been added (it later transpires RWA the sky subtraction text should also be on the VISTA as well as the WFCAM technical page.) EGS RWA to check the techical pages - instances of poor justification reported. STH HAWK-I image of Carina. Simon has put on a private web page with password - needs a link. STH has moved stuff to apm3 for linking with data so that MJI can now delete stuff in the ftp area. The data transport disk for WFCAM needs to be clear. Another 14 TByte array would be nice - STH to investigate purchase from STFC funding on his return. MJI - says photometry for HAWK-I will be done (on apm29_c) when time allows. MJI Stage 1 release software - still ongoing. MJI Technical page started, but not yet finished. RGM liaised with JRL about HAWKI - data processed. JRL has sorted out the docs and pdfs in PSBs directory so that this is essentially SC complete. He says that Acrobat is out of date on the Debian cluster (version 5) and needs an upgrade as he can't read new pdfs. SC to investigate. MJI Write utility - ongoing - not urgent JRL has sent the latest catalogue software to WFAU. JRL keyword in sky FITS files. Not back copied yet. JRL says he'll do it today. NAW polite but firm e-mail to VIZIER about IPHAS - ongoing MR did chase up WFCAM transfer script with result that MJI now gets 2 e-mails from Marco - one says data dumoped, the other says data ingested. STH ???meeting Luca ??? and Chris Dunn? - nice new screen but no lamps in dome???? MJI WFCAM linearity measures - will enquire at WFCAM board meeting about this. MJI sent two reports to JPE - ensuing silence deafening. JRL MJI The minuites of one of the telecons have just been placed on the webpage - just before the next meeting! STH is liaising with ASTEP folk and has started to construct a webpage. Ongoing. MJI to prepare a report for the internal web page. Jim to check with STFC about e-mail JRL VISTA parameter webpage. Lots of action but still not completely live. Jim has made access to reduced data possible by soft links. apm29_a,b,c will be simplified to apm29. Will do December and January but interactively, rather than by script. JRL? Sort out VISTA I/O which is on hold until GAIA has finished its own I/O tests. During the recent computer attack on the linux machines, JMI disabled authorized keys. WFCAM and ING were using the system at the time. The keys have now been regenerated. 2. WFAU minutes There have been lots of request for reprocessing. MJI released 09A over the weekend. Lack of effort means that nothing as yet can be done about Petrosian radii. 3. Recent and upcoming meetings There will be a UKIRT Board Meeting in Nottingham on Thursday, and Steve Warren, Nigel Hambly and MJI will attend for the pm session. (EGS later reported that he gave a CASU presentation in the VO and Distributed Computing session at NAM 2009. It looks like Europe and the US are taking the VO seriously, unlike us). VISTA telecon on April 28. JRL and MJI submitted reports on sky subtraction strategies and science verification and they can be found in VISTA communications on the internal web pages. Next telecon is due in about a week. There is a need for a sky offset template (HAWKI uses 4). MJI says we could discuss the design for a template and STH says he could do this. Action: JRL and MJI to talk to Steven Beard about possible ways of doing this. JPE needs offsets for publicity pictures. PLATO Science consortium will meet in Belfast on June 11. STH can't go. It just needs one of us. JRL says that ADASS 19 is now open for registration (Sapporo, Japan) and he thinks we ought to contribute something. MJI pointed out that the travel budget is currently zero. 4. Data archives AAT - Jim says that they now write to DVD in real time. He has written a script to download the data as it gets put on and we are now but a night behind. MJI says that we need a completion flag for each night. (Action: JRL) The xxx RAID array has had two of its 500 GByte units blow up and also one of the 300 GByte disks on apm10 has gone. The bad news is that this is now out of warranty. The good news is that we have 16 spares. ING data keeps on keeping on. WFCAM - Marco has re-jigged all the incoming jobs for WFCAM and this data is now up to date. (Latest received - 17 May). UKIRT - remaining few DLTs and LTOs still to read - ongoing MJI says that ESO archives are threatening to use Blu-Ray technology from mid-2009 and it warns users to have suitable hardware in place. Can we still ftp data across - JRL to investigate. 5. Optical/NIR processing : HAWKI, INT WFC, MegaCam, Subaru HAWKI - already discussed INT WFC - Mike did this whilst observing on LP recently MegaCam - nothing to report Subaru - (EGS says he has finished processing deep optical data from Subaru. Pipeline runs smoothly and produced beautiful stacks.) 6. WFCAM update. MJI is doing this whilst MR is away and is running about 3 or 4 nights behind at the moment. Semester 09A has been flagged for transfer. UDS has come back with an R band stack and wanted to know how deep it was. MJI says it should be magnitude 22.2 within a 2 arc second aperture and they measured 22.03. MJI says he has finally started GPS nebulosity processing and has written a script. It should be finished in a day or two. There is a proposal to build a planet-finder spectrograph for UKIRT - they will do the processing and we will do the archiving. This will be up for assessment at the next PPUP (?) meeting in Glasgow. There has been a flow of e-mails about flushing the detector when changing filters. This essentially means doing a quick readout after the detector has been exposed to skylight and before the next filtered exposure starts. Do we need to do this as it increases overheads. This will be discussed this week. 7. VISTA update (EGS reports from NAM 2009 that Tim de Zeeuw said that first light for VST would be September). We've had complementary remarks from Thomas Seifert on the pipeline. JRL says he has made a few bug fixes to VIRCAM software and is making progress on the science pipeline. No useful data has yet been received although the disks continue to flood in even though the detectors are not at operating temeperature. The cryocoolers are being fixed at the moment and STH says the camera should be back on the telescope on 20 May, but could be a few days earlier. JPE is scheduled to be observing tonight. MJI called for any reports for the next IOT meeting. We'll soon need to worry about tiling and allied to this JRL will take a look at MONTAGE, and also the FITS header keywords which MJI thought more important. MJI said that JPE was planning to spend some sabbatical leave here starting 1 Oct. Marco will fladg the raw data coming in automatically. The processed data webpage will be available to anyone with a password. 8. AOB New hardware for VISTA still be used by Gaia for the next month or so. Job vacancies - one contract offered a week ago, another still uncertain. The wall mounted monitor for the CASU meeting area seems to have gone into abeyance. MJI asked SC to investigate the possibility of a display similar to that on the wall of the Sackler. Continuing actions ------------------ JRL produce web page of HawkI publicity for CASU MJI finish off stage-I software release pages EGS MJI finish off technical paper RGM liaise with JRL about processing HawkI PI data JRL redo the HawkI NB image data processing to improve sky subtraction JRL sort out remaining VISTA documentation set and make sure latest STH copies are available on internal web pages RWA EGS did not finish writing the code to convert the band merged fits catalogues to ascii so this is still ongoing. Actions ------- STH investigate purchase of STFC funded 14 TByte array RWA check throught the technical pages looking for glitches MJI contact Steven Beard to discuss sky offset templates for VISTA JRL SC investigate upgrading Acrobat on Debian cluster JRL check impact of ESO archive decision to go to Blu-Ray. SC look at a monitor similar to that in the Hoyle for the CASU meeting area.