From nch@roe.ac.uk Mon Dec 21 14:48:33 2009 Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:45:29 +0000 (GMT) From: Nigel Hambly To: WFCAM Science Archive Team -- Eckhard Sutorius , Mike Read , Mark Holliman , Nigel Hambly , Nicholas Cross , Rob Blake , Ross Collins Cc: CCs for WSA weekly meeting minutes distribution -- Andrew Lawrence , Andy Adamson , Jim Emerson , Malcolm Stewart , Lorenzo Rimoldini , Mike Irwin , Peredur Williams , Bob Mann , Stephen Warren Subject: WFAU VDFS Science Archive weekly project meeting minutes 18/12/09 Minutes of WFAU VDFS Science Archive meeting: December 18th 2009 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Present: NCH, ETWS, NJC, RPB, MSH, MAR, RGM, AL Apologies: JPE, JMS, PMW, RSC DoNM: 10am, Friday January 8th 2010 in the VISTA Hut Actions discharged this week: ----------------------------- ACTION: NCH to communicate availability of SV/dry-run from the VSA Discharged ACTION: RGM to email MJI to establish details of the VDFS meeting with PSPIs at IoA. Discharged (and thanks to MJI for sending out a message trawling for likely dates late Jan / early Feb). ACTION: RPB to copy in all 08B non-survey flat file info into the open-time as they are past their proprietary period. Discharged Actions partly discharged but continuing: ----------------------------------------- None this week Actions carried forward from 11/12/09 meeting: ---------------------------------------------- None this week Specific points and new actions: -------------------------------- Project management: Nothing of note this week. WFCAM & VISTA updates: Nothing new this week. Comments and issues arising from CASU minutes: No new minutes this week, but NCH noted the following message from MJI concerning the standard catalogues (thanks for the update): "The next upgrade will "fix" the following known problems and update a couple of parameters: 1. the rms noise estimate recorded in headers and applied throughout the parameter error analysis is incorrect since it does not allow for the noise covariance. It is currently underestimated by about a factor of 2 due to the interpolation required for VISTA data. This also means all the errors quoted are wrong by about a similar factor. It also impacts on the choice of detection threshold which will also be fixed by the mod in hand. 2. the Hall radius and fluxes will be replaced by half-light equivalents as we discussed a while back. 3. the average confidence within the "rcore" aperture will be computed and written out, I propose using param 58 which is currently irrelevant - this should help minimise spurious detections of interesting objects The alternative we suggested was to encode it within parameter 55 but using 58 is easier and cleaner. The rest, i.e. elliptical apertures for galaxy fluxes is next in the queue, won't happen during the dry runs." [parameter 58 is the parent/child construct flag, redundant since the source extraction does not retain parents of deblends.] Networking: Nothing of note this week WSA/VSA Operations: ETWS noted: - With Mark's help I've reinstalled our software on sneferu upgrading CFITSIO to the latest version. This fixed the problems creating JPGs for the latest FITS files. - Created the JPGs for VISTA stacks first. The rest of the images will be done by the ensd of the weekend. - Worked on the browser page parser for the VSA. Elsewhere CU19 has been chugging away on creating the release of GPS DR6; next in the queue is the calibration catalogue DB release (apologies to STH who requested it, but it got stuck behind the GPS...) Hardware and Systems: MSH noted that sneferu is upgraded fro the latest Debian linux; other servers to follow over the next wee while... Software: MAR noted that the VSA user interface is now fully functional apart from colour image production. NJC has been working on mods necessary for VSA source merging in the presence of new attributes, and also on mods to CUs 13 & 14, again in advance of VSA deep stacking functionality. Survey Data Release: NCH noted that during GCS DR7 eyeballing he's come across quite a few instances of one or two jpegs being blank (around 10 multiframes so far). ETWS says this is a known problem and he was working through fixing this when VSA things overtook him. Non-survey Data Release: Nothing of note this week. Astrogrid deployment & Data Analysis services: MSH noted that the AG DSAs at WFAU have had to be reverted to older versions since the latest is too unstable. AL noted that there is to be a VOdesktop update just before Xmass where the big new thing will be support for Table Access Protocol (TAP) services ... ... hence we'll be able to turn up the archive volume to 11. Miscellaneous: Merry Chrimbo and all that. ============================================================= Nigel Hambly Tel: +44-131-668-8234 Institute for Astronomy Fax: +44-131-668-8416 School of Physics and Astronomy University of Edinburgh Email: nch@roe.ac.uk Royal Observatory Blackford Hill Edinburgh EH9 3HJ The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. =============================================================