From nch@roe.ac.uk Tue Sep 28 13:46:53 2004 Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 11:37:23 +0100 (BST) From: Nigel Hambly To: WFCAM Science Archive Team -- Eckhard Sutorius , Harvey MacGillivray , Ian Bond , Mike Read , Nigel Hambly , Bob Mann Cc: CCs for WSA weekly meeting minutes distribution -- Clive Davenhall , Andrew Lawrence , Andy Adamson , Peter Shillan , John Taylor , Jim Emerson , Malcolm Stewart , Martin Hill , Mike Irwin , Peredur Williams Subject: WFAU WSA weekly meeting minutes, 24th September 2004 Minutes of WFCAM Science Archive meeting: 24th September 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- Present: NCH, ETWS, JMS, JDT, PMW Apologies: JPE, AL, MCH, RGM, GPS, HMG, MAR, SCK DONM: 10am, Friday 1st October, plate library Actions discharged: ------------------- None this week. Actions partly discharged but continuing: ----------------------------------------- ACTION: NCH to remember to action a team programmer to implement range checking in the low-level ingest codes. ETWS & NCH have been disucssing this; likely that the new developer will be assigned this task to start them off. ACTION: JDT to liaise with MCH concerning an end-to-end test of the PAL deployment. JDT has disucssed this with MCH; MCH has been on leave for the last 2 weeks but a "workflow" test using portal and registry seems like a good idea. ACTION: PMW to apply a little pressure to the premises team to solve the continuing problem of heat overload in C1. PMW reported bringing this up at the site services meeting this week; a quote has been obtained for additional airconditioning; action continues. ACTION: ALL to review risk register and think of any new internal or external risks that should be documented in the risk register. Defered until top level plan is explicitly defined. PMW tabled the VISTA risk register as an example. ACTION: JPE to design and set up centralised VDFS web pages. Progressing. (there is now a link to it from our WSA Twiki). - continuing; thanks for progressing these. Actions carried forward from 3/09/04 meeting: ----------------------------------------------- None Specific points and new actions: -------------------------------- Project management: Interviews for the two new posts happened on Wed and Thurs this week; both posts had very strong candidates. Offers will be made to the first choice candidates today. NCH received the following WFCAM update (via UKIDSS) from AA: - WFCAM arrived on the island on schedule in August, immediately after the remodelling work in the computer room. - Work since then has progressed to schedule, the field tower went to the summit in the first week and the camera was built up in the Hilo lab and shipped to the summit on Tuesday this week. - Corrector plate modification at AMOS has gone well, and they are ahead of the schedule set for them without resorting to computer controlled polishing. The plate is already formally very close to acceptable (rms below 100nm but p-v a little higher than it should be) and we are hoping to have Eli Atad at AMOS early next week to witness a measurement of the surface. Although we're not home and dry just yet, there is now a chance that we can bring the plate to JAC and install at the summit before commissioning on sky. I would put the chance of this at much better than 50%. There is a possibility that we can't schedule this installation without accepting a week slip in the overall schedule, but the benefits clearly outweigh this. - IF we are able to put the plate in, then we have a revised plan (compared to the base which has the camera coming off in the week of 15-Nov). Instead, WFCAM will stay on the telescope, and the week of the 15th will be used to make the two critical external adjustments (mirror plug tilt shims, autouider focus), then carry on taking commissioning data until early December. The aim will be to ensure that we fully understand the interactions between the various alignments, shims etc., and be in a strong position to quickly make the internal adjustments (essentially, shimming the focal-plane spider) in February. We will also, of course, get a significantly better set of data for the pipeline tests than we had anticipated. Mike and Jim are aware of this, and of the possible dates when it would be sensible for one of them to come out. NCH noted that this means there is a very good chance that a more complete test of the the end-to-end dataflow system should be possible with commissioning data by the end of the year. JMS asked that he and PMW sit down to review the VDFS work breakdown structure. Comments and issues arising from CASU fortnightly minutes: The meeting noted the minutes of the CASU meeting of 13/9/2004; there were no matters arising. Networking: ETWS noted: "During a CU1/operator GUI test (see below) a download of the 4.6GB of new processed data provided by CASU was accomplished with a transfer rate of 4.3MB/s. This is remarkable, since the TCP parameters in Cambridge are still on their default values and shows how good the new server at CASU is. ACD will perform some pchar tests with these settings before we will ask Peter Bunclark (CASU) to tune them." ETWS also noted his attendance at the UKLight networking meeting at NeSC. This was very interesting, but is perhaps at too early a stage to be of relevance to the WSA project just yet. In any case, a TWiki note will be added in the appropriate pages. ACTION: ETWS to add a TWiki note concerning UKLight high speed networking to the appropriate networking pages. Hardware: NCH noted that we now need to reconfigure and upgrade (see last minutes) the catalogue servers, allowing for the next year or so of WFCAM operations and leaving room for expansion. ACTION: NCH and PMW to meet offline to raise the required order(s) for upgrades to the WSA catalogue servers With this in mind, NCH, ETWS, SCK and MAR had moved the remains of Wiglaf from C1, and HMG has agreed to oversee the removal of the old DVD towers to make room for an extra WSA rackmount cabinet in C1. The DVD towers (which hold backup data of the SuperCOS Halpha survey) will be housed in the plate library survey plate store. ACTION: HMG to oversee the removal of the DVD towers from C1. Software: ETWS noted: "I've been working most of the time on the GUI. A first version which is able to run the up to now finished CUs is checked into the CVS. Now I'm implementing a curation and programe history reader." NCH noted that the CU7 software (source merging and seaming for mosaiced surveys with arbitrary passband/epoch combinations) is now finished, tested (as far as is possible at present) and checked into the CVS. Further testing must await real data from WFCAM. SSA: No further news this week. Astrogrid deployment: MCH will continue to investigate enabling externally available web services on the WSA PAL deployment on his return (some problems with PAL SOAP services not being available to tomcat server srif112 previously). Miscellaneous: Nothing further this week.