CASU meeting Wednesday 22nd February 11:30-13:00 CASU meeting area. Present: MJI, JRL, AKY, EGS, SC, STH, JRF, JPE, RGM Apologies: NAW, MR Agenda: 1. Actions from last meeting 2. Comments on WFAU minutes 3. Hardware update 4. Meetings and telecons 5. Data archives update 6. WFCAM update 7. VISTA update 8. VST update 9. AOB Joe Findlay (JRF) was welcomed and initiated using the traditional CASU pearls of wisdom. 1. Actions from last meeting ----------------------------- JRL - still continues to investigate "rolling" master linearity corrections and will include "average" channels too - honest ! <<<< SC - has completed five Blade Ubuntu/Debian upgrades - rest ongoing <<<< STH - progress with VISTA calibration papers ongoing and will circulate draft versions in time for next meeting <<<< JRL - still needs to check if the info in darks.dqc could have detected the problem VISTA darks on 20110913 <<<< SC - resuscitated apm45's communications with web network access monitoring JRL - figured out a way to fix the apcor2 problem for VISTA grouted tiles EGS and are making it so. Meanwhile MJI is fixing the pawprint cats. EGS - trawled the VISTA DCQ database for peculiar sky brightnesses and did not find any obvious examples MJI - contacted the VPHAS team and discussed processing options for their unusual observing pattern 2. Comments on WFAU minutes ---------------------------- MJI sent the following response to a comment regarding JRF's bright star algorithm and whether or not CASU would be implementing it in the cataloguing software -> NO ...... or to expand sligtly ...... As the cataloguing and classification software is generic we won't be implementing any VISTA-specific flags within it. Furthermore for VISTA tile products in particular, it would not be completely straightforward to implement since you would have to deconstruct the tile back down to the pawprint components to compute the correct affected parts. The nebuliser front-end to the tile cataloguing removes most of the problem anyway but, as always, its all yours ...... There was some discussion regarding the prediction of the main VISTA diffraction spike locations since these would probably have a more deleterious effect than the faint fuzzy halos. JPE and JRF will find out more and report back. <<<< ...... nada mas ...... 3. Hardware update ------------------- Assorted software updates have been applied to apm45 and apm46 in readiness for them taking over all the VST processing. After much further umming and ahhing, apm46 will host the processed data and apm45 the raw. SC reported that the 2b apm47 and apm48 have been ordered, the former will host the HAWKI reprocessing and the latter Gaia-ESO and other spectroscopic work. Despite ordering a new batch of LTO4 tapes over a month ago .... nada. MJI asked SC to chase up the order yet again since we have almost run out of patience and tapes --> backups - who needs 'em anyway <<<< 4. Meetings and telecons ------------------------- Upcoming VMC skypecon on 23rd February, much ado about 47Tuc byproduct now that everyone knows it has been tiled. VST: as noted earlier MJI visited U. of Herts to discuss VPHAS processing options and agreed that tile-like image products were not required. All large area science products will be catalogue-based. Initially these will be at the pawprint band-merged level, with later an integrated band-merged catalogue covering the complete footprint of each VPHAS OB setup. The VPHAS team will ponder the required content of these catalogues cf. to the current IPHAS equivalent and carry out their own band-merging tests in the interim. ESO have called a meeting to discuss data products from the VST/OmegaCAM pipelines at ESO HQ, on March 21st. Representatives from the 3 processing groups and the 3 public survey PI teams have been invited. MJI will attend for CASU and report back at the next meeting. <<<< Other upcoming meetings include: the Third VVV Science Meeting, 22nd-24th March 2012, Viņa del Mar, Chile and "Calibration & Standardization of Large Surveys & Missions in Astronomy & Astrophysics" conference to be held April 16th-19th, 2012, at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, USA. NAW and JPE will going to find out what is going on, particularly with variables, in the VVV survey, and will report back. Attendance at the latter meeting was also discussed but no clear decision was arrived at. There is also a meeting for Gaia-ESO survey WG10+11 in Nice 18th-19th April. JRL will attend to deal with spectra processing queries and get some feedback on the data prodccts. 5. Data archives update ------------------------ Everything is up to date, in spite of assorted short-term transfer problems with WFCAM raw data. 6. WFCAM update ---------------- Ingest, checking and processing all on track. Data to end of January have been checked and is now flagged as ready for copying. Note for WFAU: the nights of 8th and 9th are both 3 camera nights (camera #3 as usual n'a pas marche). These were used for non-UKIDSS projects but at least 3 groups have already expressed interest in the data products, which is, of course, why they were processed. A quick check back through the the "unprocessed" nights on the web pages revealed the following WFCAM missing camera nights 20120108 11B - processed 20120109 11B - processed 20100628 10A - processed 20091105 09B - rest await 20091111 09B | 20080918 08B | 20080926 08B | 20071023 07B | 20061118 06B V and as a further test, data for 20100628 were also put throught the pipeline mangle. The remaining 6 nights are on hold awaiting suitable bribes. With the upcoming completion of the UKIDSS surveys the question of back- propagating the average confidence measure to the earlier data is worth flagging as a desirable upgrade to the data products prior to the final releases. The GPS DR8 data release has finally happened after much recalibration and a lot of effort by all concerned. We can only hope this is the final word on this topic. 7. VISTA update ---------------- Receipt of data, ingest, checking and processing has yet again been going smoothly. Raw data up to mid-February has arrived and data up to the end of January have been processed through Phase I of the pipeline. November and December data were checked, dusted off and released to PIs and WFAU mid-February. Note that December data onwards does not suffer from the apcor2 feature. In correcting this problem for earlier data we decided not to update the overall photometric calibration yet. Note that the changes are around the ~1% level for both aperture corrections and magnitude zero-points. However, as the effect of the offsets is self-cancelling when computing magnitudes it is not an urgent update. We expect the VISTA calibration to be revised somewhat, particularly the extinction terms for Y and Z, following the completion of the work required to finalise the calibration papers. When this has been completed we plan to update all the photometric calibration. No news is still good news from the point of view of the next installment of ESO Phase 3 deliverables. We still await the product format standard and Phase 3 instructions for catalogue submission. Meanwhile two of the PIs, for VMC and VHS, have asked us to deliver further single OB products in the interim. <<<< RGM noted that there is supposed to be a review by the PSP of the progress of the public surveys. This should occur sometime around October 2012. There were a couple of VVV queries regarding repeatibility of the pipeline choice of data for sky estimation, of particular concern for the DIA folk. The short answer, is given similar OB sequences you get similar choice of files for sky estimation, or in other words, in theory the same bits of sky get used on repeat monitoring visits. Whether or not this translates into the same residual bumps and wiggles in the sky is another matter. After hearing that 47Tuc had been tiled as part of the VMC survey, MJI cherry-picked single good Y,J,Ks pipeline tile products for a post-processing test on the quality of the science data. The CMD's looked suitably impressive and a rather nice colour pic was generated. MJI will liaise with the VMC PI about contacting Richard Hook to see if the ESO publicity machine is interested. <<<< 8. VST update -------------- Internet transfers of VST data from ESO, Garching have been running smoothly with a time lag of ~2 weeks from the observation date. Raw data up to mid-February has been copied over and ingested. The copying, and processing is run on a weekly cycle, partly for processing convenience and partly to mitigate moaning. It was noted that the Paranal transfer through the EVALSO link was supposed to start operating regularly in mid-February 2012, with all the VLT/VLTI/VST data traffic being routed through it. VISTA is to be added shortly after, following some optimization to be done on the science data transfer software. If it has started for VST, we haven't noticed it yet. JPE volunteered to find out more about the progress with this. <<<< Meanwhile the VST web pages, processing and survey progress and PI access are all up to date. In the previous minutes JPE commented that the SADT restriction on only using cardinal directions for VST observations has now been removed. Presumably this means that from P89 onwards arbitrary PA orientations could be used. In theory this shouldn't break anything but ..... it needs monitoring. Investigating using available SDSS photometry in the SA fields as a supplement to the photomatric calibration is underway. <<<< A workaround to improve detection of faint fuzzy blobs in the ATLAS U-band data is being investigated. After a few more tests this will be back-propagated to all the ATLAS U-band stackedimage catalogues. <<<< The limits for automatic pipeline stacking need slightly adjusting as the pipeline is currently stacking products with almost a whole detector offset. JRL will sort this out and EGS will remove the surplus useless <<<< stacks from the online product store. <<<< 9. AOB/news ------------ Lots of CASUhelps and even replys but still no prizes this month - so rollover to next meeting yet again. A celebratory glass, or two, of fizz was imbibed to celebrate JRL's good news. Continuing actions ------------------ JRL - investigate benefits of a "rolling" master linearity correction or even an average channel one SC - finish off the rest of the Ubuntu/Debian upgrade for Blades STH - progress evermore the VISTA calibration papers writeups and circulate draft papers before the next CASU meeting JRL - check if the info in darks.dqc could have detected the problem darks JRL - finish off fixing the apcor2 problem for VISTA grouted tile data EGS MJI - finish off the pawprint updates for above New actions ----------- JPE - investigate if location of VISTA diffraction spikes with respect to JRF bright stars are readily predictable SC - encourage the LTO4 suppliers to extract their collective digits MJI - attend and report back on the ESO VST meeting RGM - supply list of extra VHS deliverables MJI - contact VMC PI about ESO PR possibilities of the 47Tuc colour pics JPE - investigate progress of use of EVALSO link MJI - use available SDSS catalogues in SA fields as photometric alternative JRL - back-propagate improved U-band cataloguing to all ATLAS data JRL - alter pipeline limits for automatic stacking EGS - remove surplus to requirements stacked products