Overall status: In A configuration (ending 12 Sep); Correlator hardware (usually 63 BlB pairs) available. Tuesday maintenance day (due to Wed fixed date observing); last week's maintenance days had some issues which percolated through the week (more later).
Key dates:
08 Jun - 12 Sep: A configuration (move from 31 May - 08 Jun).
Staff Travel:
FO: 12 Aug - 12 Sep
RP: 10 Sep - 16 Sep (Brazil)
URSI (Perley)
Visitors:
Michiel Brentjens: 11 Jun - 11 Nov (Holography; characterizing polarized beams)
Hardware status and updates (Langley, Perley, Rupen)
Array (Perley/Langley):
Antennas: EA25 out; EA23 on MP; back to array 1 Sep.
Receivers: EA23; EA24 for first L-band solar capable Rx; several more weeks for this.
Perley: RF Switch testing ongoing.
Calibration (Perley): Gain compression/expansion ongoing (Hayward).
WIDAR (Rupen):
Notes (Rupen/Sowinski): Currently 63 BlB pairs ready; issues from the power outage (set of 5 boards that were not configuring properly leading to zeroes for the unconfigured boards (for OSRO1 this would be 25% of the data; OSRO2 (and RSRO variants) 50% of the data and for standard RSRO varies depending on board use. Bad inter frame delay default (to be fixed). Adjust BlB firmware/software failsafe.
Computing (Robnett):
Notes: Several enhancements (switch, re-org) to facilitate support for greater data rates.
Mostly quiescent at the end of the configuration. OSRO defaults approved and implemented.
CASA Update (new functionality available/issues/enhancements):Notes: New stable release available (CASA Version 3.3.0 (r15979) Compiled on: Wed 2011/08/24 05:44:16 UTC); this will be used for the EVLA Data Reduction Workshop.
EVLA Data Reduction Workshop: All RSRO/local staff
NOTE: Please cc me on submitted tests so that it can be assigned the appropriate priority!
Commissioning priorities for the week (McMullin, Chandler)
Configuration move week (work around these activities:
Mon
1000-1700: Testing/software development time
1800-0900: Science operations and testing
Tue: Maintenance day
0630-1700: Maintenance operations
1800-0900: Science operations and testing
Wed:
0900-0900: Science operations and testing
Thu:
0900-1700: Testing/software development time
1800-0900: Science operations and testing
Fri (not-yet-a-holiday):
0900-0900: Science operations and testing
Sat-Sun
Science operations + planned testing
Issues Affecting Science Observing:
Correlator: [Rupen/Carlson w/ Momjian/Sault] V stokes issues.Identified possible issues in the noise related to the 3-level phase rotator. Water maser data taken. Write-up underway to be shared with Brent; further planning pending
Correlator: [Pokorny/Rupen/McMullin] time mislabeling in SDM data (non-synchronous operation between correlator dumps and CBE can require additional 1/2 integration time padding for online flags). .Needs close-out testing (Michael); confirmation of visibility/flags (Joe).
Correlator: [Clark/Carlson] Delay rocking across bands. (October)
Array: [All] Zoo of other effects (some data are very good, some still seeing antenna-based IF/Polarization issue).
Testing This week/soon
[Sowinski et al]; Executor update testing
Phased array testing as possible
Planetary tracking tests
3-bit sampler testing; automatic gain setting.
astrometry mode testing.
MCAF update testing.
[Goss et al]; Sub-band edge effects testing.
[Owen]: L band deep field study
Subarrays: cleanup.
Stage 2 mixer testing to relax sub 128 MHz BW grids
Correlator: Rupen: S-band shadow testing
Spectral line: Roy/Dhawan: HI High resolution bandpass testing
Notes: Initial UVW tests: I wanted to confirm that CASA and AIPS are close (~few parts in 10^6). In fact, they are not. UVFIX run on data imported from CASA makes a change of almost 10^-4.
Calibrator Models
Notes: Reduction underway.
HPC (Bhatnagar/Owen/Golap):
Notes: ~500 GB data set obtained. Issues noted when filling switched power.
Imaging (Ott/Golap):
Notes: Takahashi/Ott working on mosaic needs in PST/OPT. Document under review.
Algorithm (Bhatnagar, Owen):
Notes: Calibration discussion this week (Moellenbrock)