VISTA IOT MINUTES, 2009-10-06, 9-11 am (Chile) (prepared by Valentin D. Ivanov) * * * Present: Santiago: Thomas Szeifert (TSz) Steffen Mieske (SMi) Valentin D. Ivanov (VDI) Garching: Marina Rejkuba (MRe) Magda Arnaboldi (MAr) Wolfgang Hummel (WHu) Paranal Jim Emerson (JEm) UK Mike Irwin (MIr) Simon Hodgkin (SHo) * * * Agenda: 1. VISTA status, schedule and planned activities 2. Preparation for the Science Verification Run 3. Preparation for the Dry Runs 4: Action Items 5: Others 6: Date of the next meeting * * * 1. VISTA status, schedule and planned activities Pending time line: (2009-09-23) - Call for OBs for the Sci. Verification (2009-10-01) - Instruments ready, call for Dry Runs' OBs (P85-) 2009-10-08 - contingency, Paranalization if schedule is not changed 2009-10-16 - start Sci. Verification run (10 nights out of 14) 2009-10-30 - Early Sci. Operations: Paranalization + Dry Runs (P85-) 2009-12-16 - P85 call for phase 2 2009-02-16 - Start of P85 TSz: short description of the VISTA status after the coating: the telescope works, a lot of data were taken during his last shift, but with a few small exceptions the seeing was poor. JEm: the seeing was also poor during the last nights, but it improved for a while in the middle of the last night and the image quality was excellent. TSz: confirms that even when the seeing was poor, the images were round and nice even at the edges of the FoV. DIMM and VISTA gave incompatible seeing readings. MRe: asks if JEm took data for the first light press release JEm: only the data from the last nigth are suitable for PR, when the seeing was good; he observed the LMC; in general, he took a lot of data but under poor seeing, for example NGC2024 was imaged in 3 bands; not much data were taken during the first half of the night, more were taken during the second half. There was a problem with the guiding probe - the guiding failed and this caused the OBs to crash, the OBs could be restarted and completed later, though. TSz: brings up fact that the pointing model is still pending. JEm: said that the new pointing model must have been installed because the last night the pointing was good. TSz: points that the back up of the recent data is important, particularly because some can be used for PR JEm: says that the data are backed up. MIr asks if there is any PR data on the disk that they expect to receive within the next couple of days. JEm: answers this positively. * * * 2. Preparation for the Science Verification Run TSz: says that it is time to make the ticket booking for the flights for people from Garching who will participate in the Dry Runs in the end of Oct, incl. for Dario Dorigo who is coming to Paranal to install the newest version of the OT. TSz: announces that paranal stilldoesn't have the new server installed, that will be needed for the parallel data reduction during SciVer. He will talk to Christophe Dumas. TSz: the new pipeline calibration database, prepared by WHu, has arrived, but has not been installed. Should we aks DFS to do it, or should we wait until one of us is up on Paranal? VIV: says better to do it earlier, in case there are problems WHu: the RICE compressed files must be uncompressed before being included in the calibDB. SMi: better to try, if it works, will be done and over MRe: says that there was a meeting in Garching to discuss the data processing during the SciVer. The OB preparation is going on, led by MAr for the extragalactic project, and by Monica Petr Gotzens for the Orion project. The OBs must be ready by the end of the week. In the process, Monica Petr Gotzens found discrepancies between the ESO VISTA ETC and the VPO VISTA ETC. one problem during the OB preparation is what the jitter scale means. JEm: explains that this is an integer (or may be a float) type factor that expands the adopted jitter pattern. The default value of one is reccommended only for good seeing because otherwise the images taken at different jitter positions would overlap, so in case of poor seeing it should be increased to two. MRe: says that the jitter amplitude of 10 arcsec that is typical for most of the jitter patterns is big enough to avoid the overlap. VDI: explains that this is the maximum amplitude, and many images are cramped within this 10 arcsec. MRe: points that for a simple U-pattern this is not the case. VDI: says that this is the case for the more complicated jitter patterns with more images. MIr: explains that the small jitter pattern is a problem only during the observations are done on a single pawprint, this is not a problem for data taken in tiles or even half-tiles. SHo: asks how JEm is making combined observations of two tiles (one to be used to make sky) without a sky offset template JEm: explains that he makes with SADT a xml file with the twelve individual pointings, then generates with P2PP OBs for each of them, and finally merges their OBD files into a single OBD file that is begin executed. This is an workaround, of course. MIr: points that on a long turn we need a solution to do sky offsets, that will be understood by the pipeline. JEm: currently, to reduce this kind of data requires manual interaction with the pipeline. MIr: what will be done for the SciVer observations of Orion? MRe: answers that no sky offsets will be done, but Monika P.G. is experimenting with some containers and nesting to improve the sky subtraction. TSz: the goal of the Orion SciVer program is not to make nice images, but to produce photometry over the entire region. MIr: But the poor sky subtraction affects the quality of the photometry, so it is important. * * * 3. Preparation for the Dry Runs TSz: aks how the data from the dry runs will be delivered to the users, in particular to the UltraVISTA team. MAr: The UltraVISTA team will receive the data from the archive. MIr: we will also send them the products of our data reduction. TSz: we will have to plan for taking calibrations, i.e. illumination correction which seems to be very important for them. SHo: we found from previous experience with WFCAM on UKIRT that the illumination correction for ZYJHK can be derived from stacked 2MASS photometric residuals from normal science observations. It is stable on a monthly timescale. It is quite tricky to accurately derive this using offset exposures placing stars in different parts of the detectors. This is due to problems such as variable sky conditions (background/seeing/transparency) and density and coverage of usable stars. JEm: suspects that the problems mostly with the Narrow Band filters TSz: adds - because the filter's transmission changes depending on the incidence angle TSz: planing for the Dry Runs - Michael Hilker will come to help with the observations; Dario Dorigo and somebody from the software too. In addition, some engineering work will be done during this time, but not during the first week of Nov because it is too short for the Eng. Dept. SMi: SciVer is still 16-30.10? TSz: Yes, and it is unlikely to change. Note that only about ten nights in this period will be used for actual SciVer because of some pending technical work, i.e. generating a new pointing model VDI: but the pointing model was just done. TSz: explains that some AO parameters were modified and that this has an effect on the pointing model, and he wants to modify some others, so it redoing the pointing model will be necessary; other technical issues also have to be addressed. MRe: Presence on Paranal during the SciVer and Dry Runs: 15-30.10. MRE 15-27.10. MPE 24-30.10. MAR * * * 4: Action Items Progress report on previous action items: * AI 2009-01: Monitor execution times & survey completion status Is being followed up by MAR, MRE. 2009-07-29: There is a first prototype 2009-10-06: no news (MRe) STATUS: ONGOING * AI 2009-04: SADT delivery 2009-10-06: MAr reported that F. Comeron asked to have formal acceptance meeting. The plan is to have report with all feedback collected from the Science Verification and Dry Runs observation preparations ready by November 17. This report will be sent to JEm and after ~2 weeks the reply is expected. After that the acceptance meeting should be scheduled in the first week of December. STATUS: OPEN * AI 2009-06: VIV: by the end of June send the new simulation report and code to be taken over for future simulation. 2009-10-06: report writing in progress (VDI); to be transferred to the EST during Oct SciVer (TSz) STATUS: ONGOING * AI 2009-07: MAR/MRE: contact PIs at the mid September (once the handover is done/certain) and inform them about the time line and activities. Should wait until the Closed Cycle Cooler is repaired. 2009-10-06: done (MRe, MAr) STATUS: CLOSED * AI 2009-09: Offset sky template would be requested for the next (post SV, dry run) instrument package. Pipeline data reduction recipes are ready to work with the offset sky data sets. 2009-10-06: VDI should organize it, with help from software (i.e. Pedro Bascai), and help from JEm; by Dec 2009; starts to be changed from on hold to open (MAr) STATUS: OPEN * AI 2009-11: TSz should find out if the constraints sets could be carried with the OBs, to the OS and the fits header of the VIRCAM files. Otherwise it is not easy to propagate these data by interfaces. 2009-07-29: TSZ iterating with R. Schmutzer, but DFI (T. Bierwirth) will also need to be involved. For surveys, given the small range of programmes it is expected that there are not too many different OBs, and this might need to be followed in a different/manual way in the beginning - this could imply a major change for the tools that cannot be done in the last moment. STATUS: ONGOING * AI 2009-12: TSz should check how/if the fits keywords of the raw file have the information about the concatenation and other scheduling containers. 2009-07-29: Answer is NO. But is this necessary? JEM thinks yes if processing of data takes this into account. TSZ: this will need to be done together with P2PP/OT programmers and VLT software support after discussion. TSZ will raise it, but cannot promise a solution. 2009-10-06: the information about the containers must be included in the keywords, CASU must be included in this work because it will have an effect on the pieline (JEm); this is also relevant for the sky offset template (MAr); not really, because the sky offset is in the same OB as the primary target tile (JEm); in the past we used for this purpose the DPR keyworks (TSz); this info might be needed also for the ESO archive users (WHu); a good example for the archive is to identify the telluric standards, corresponding to a given data set, so the issue is relevant generally for all ESO instruments (MRe). STATUS: ONGOING * AI 2009-14: GHU to check that the seeing distribution function in the scheduler for VIRCAM takes into account the finite (0.51") nominal resolution of the instrument. STATUS: ONGOING * AI 2009-16: TSZ to get confirmation from A. Kaufer that the letter can be sent to SciVer and public survey PIs. 2009-10-06: done (TSz) STATUS: CLOSED * AI 2009-17: MRE should request that EVM check that sadt and p2pp were using the same instrument package. 2009-10-06: done (TSz) STATUS: CLOSED * AI 2009-18: MAR and JEM should iterate the fact sheet to be sent to the public survey PIs. 2009-10-06: done (TSz) STATUS: CLOSED * AI 2009-19: JEM should sent the latest updates for the exposure time calculator to Marina (silver reflectivity, filter curves) 2009-10-06: the transmission curves for the NB filters are still missing (MRe); OK, will send them when back to UK (JEm); next the discussion goes towards the differences between the ESO and VPO VISTA ETCs: it is important to understand the differences (MRe); the VPO ETC was not even meant to be updated anymore to avoid competition with the ESO ETC, which was meant to be the main VISTA ETC (JEm); how is the sky brightness calculated in the VPO VISTA ETC? (TSz); it is a parameter that can be modified by the user (JEm); there are known problems with the sky brightness in the IR ESO ETCs, especially in the H-band, they seem to be calculated from a wrong sky spectrum, although there is a good one available, but it is used only for the EELT ETC (TSz). STATUS: ONGOING * * New Action Items from this meeting: * AI 2009-20: installation of a new served for faster/cheaper/better data reduction, to be available for semi-real time data reduction during the Science Verification run on 16-30.10.2009. TSz will talk to Christophe Dumas. STATUS: NEW * AI 2009-21: Create poor weather conditions (particularly poor seeing) back up SciVer programs. The approved SciVer programs request seeing 0.8 arcsec or better, if the SciVer was last week, it would result in almost zero data. STATUS: NEW * * * 5: Others * TSz: What are we going to do if the weather during the SciVer is poor, i.e. the seeing is worse than 0.8 arcsec, which is requested by both the approved SciVer programs? VDI: is it possible to take some SciVer data later, during the Dry Runs? TSz: no, we must finish on Oct 30, otherwise the data reduction will drag on forever. MAr: We must have back up programs. TSz: This is a new action item. VDI: the PIs of the SciVer programs must optimize them to complete first a self-sufficient data set, even if it is only part of the requested data (i.e. a single tile in all requested filters, or a fill area coverage in one filter). * WHu: Incomplete opslogs files are arriving TSz: the the problem is probably in the making of the opslog files rather than in the transfer; he will transfer some QC logs to WHu. * * * 6: Date of the next meeting 3.11.2009, 14-16 (10-12 Chile) - the time is to be confirmed. 1.12.2009, 14-16 (10-12 Chile)