SCUBA-2: baby steps

As most of you will know, SCUBA-2 is now on the telescope being put through its paces. Given the high data rate of the instrument, the number of people working on it (in Canada and the UK as well as here at the JAC) and the upcoming early science call, we are racing to make raw data downloadable from the JSA by the beginning of November.

This is a challenge, both because the instrument systems themselves are in flux, and because everybody is so busy with commissioning. Still, thanks to the great efforts of Sharon and her team at CADC, we have coaxed some data into the JSA and searched for it using the test interface. It might not seem very exciting, but this has given most of the infrastructure a good workout, so it is a promising sign that we can meet our target.

ORAC-DR and Starlink on Twitter!

Much to Tim and Frossie's chagrin, I've created two Twitter accounts for ORAC-DR and Starlink. I haven't completely sorted out what will be done with them at this time, but for now I'll probably use them to disseminate short tips and tricks for using ORAC-DR and Starlink software.

Follow them at http://twitter.com/oracdr and http://twitter.com/starlinksoft!

Thumbnails in search results

As mentioned previously, the pipeline generates little thumbnails based on the representative image and the representative spectrum products. Now, CADC can show these thumbnails in search results. This hopefully will allow people to quickly identify search results of interest prior to downloading. Clicking on the thumbnails will launch the full preview of the representative image or spectrum as before.

If you have recent data, check it out. We hope to re-reduce the backlog at some point in order to generate products and thumbnails for older data too.

JLS DR telecon - 1st meeting

Attendance: A. Chrysostomou, R. Tilanus, T. Jenness, R. Plume, M. van der Wiel, J. Di Francesco, G. Fuller, B. Cavanagh, H. Thomas, D. Johnstone, H. Roberts, D. Nutter, J. Hatchell, F. Economou

- initial discussion on whether we will have a SCUBA-2 pipeline ready. There will be something in place for shared risks but basic. More development will have to wait until we have all arrays in place as it is not worth sinking any effort into this at this time.

- some people are having issues getting the pipeline installed and the fact that there is a lack of documentation. If people/institutes are having issues installing (any) Starlink software, then please inform the JAC (stardev@jach.hawaii.edu) providing the relevant details.

ACTION 1: JAC will provide information on how to rsync the starlink releases to get latest patches/fixes. Information will also include for which operating system these patches/fixes are available.

DONE(!): Instructions are available on the starlink web site (http://starlink.jach.hawaii.edu/).
To download the most recent release go to: http://starlink.jach.hawaii.edu/starlink/Releases
To keep up to date with the latest fixes and patches go to:
http://starlink.jach.hawaii.edu/starlink/rsyncStarlink


- GAF requested for more statistics to be made available from the QA. GAF will follow up with specific request to Brad (see Action 3 below)

- it was clarified that the summit pipeline (during normal night-time observing) only runs basic QA on calibrations. After the end of observing, all data taken that night is re-reduced by a “nightly pipeline” which executes the full QA and advanced processing. The reduced data products which result from this are shipped to CADC and can be downloaded with (or without) the raw data in the normal way.

ACTION 2a: JAC to make QA log available to observers/co-Is following nightly reduction via the OMP (as a downloadable file).
ACTION 2b: JAC to make a more compact and readable QA report format.

ACTION 3: For SLS to provide JAC (ie Brad) with list of statistics and requirements for their QA, and also what they want for their reduction recipes to do.

- JH raised some existing issues from the GBS: flatfielding (striping) of early HARP data; some bad baselines are not being picked up by QA; although not as prevalent as in older data, spikes are not trapped by the QA; an investigation is needed on how the gridding should best be done

+++ the flatfielding problem is on Brad’s worklist

+++ we need more feedback from the teams on which bad baselines are not been filtered out

+++ de-spiking data is not a problem that JAC has been able to tackle as yet. Part of the issue is that these do not seem to be as prevalent in data any more and observers (PI as well as JLS) are not reporting the issue any longer. GAF reported that spikes are still present but at a small level, which is an issue for SLS who are looking for weak, narrow lines.

ACTION 4: For JLS teams to provide JAC with images/data/log of spikes when they come across them in their data.

- RPT raised a few issues from the NGLS:

+++ need ability to baseline fit both wide and narrow lines in same data set

+++ need ability to restrict e.g. moments analysis to known velocity range.

+++ QA generally fails for (at least) early NGLS data. Will need to investigate this more but need an easy means to switch off in recipes. This is easy in the main recipe, but less so in the advanced interative part.

- there is a blog available for data reduction and pipeline activities (you’re problably looking at it right now!): http://pipelinesandarchives.blogspot.com/

- the issue of making the pipeline more controllable through a config file to set parameters was discussed. TJ announced that he is developing infrastructure so that the pipeline can be parameterised

- ACC received several emails prior to the meeting. A common theme was the lack of documentation explaining what the pipeline does to data, and how to use the pipeline. JH repeated this concern at the meeting.

ACTION 5: ACC took an action following the close of the meeting to organise the production of pipeline documentation. These will probably take the form of a detailed account of what the pipeline does, and a separate cookbook which explains how to run the pipeline with the different options available.

ACTION 6: ACC to poll for a date and time for next telecon and make these meeting notes available.