OSRO Commissioning Test Group

Purpose

The purpose is to subject each and every OSRO observation to scrutiny by a scientific staff member. Problems found are to be reported both to the responsible group at NRAO and the observer.

Data obtained will be linked through JIRA for comment and review: https://bugs.aoc.nrao.edu/secure/Dashboard.jspa

Group

While the group started you with just five members, more were inofficially added over time:

NRAO staff:

  • Gustaaf van Moorsel (Lead)
  • Joseph McMullin
  • Emmanuel Momjian
  • Juergen Ott
  • Michael Rupen
  • Mark Claussen
  • Eric Greisen
  • Miriam Krauss
  • Maurilio Pannella
  • Veronica Strazzulo

RSRO visitors:

  • Laura Chomiuk
  • Jacqueline van Gorkom
  • James Miller-Jones
  • Manuel Aravena

Missions

Data Assessment Checklist

Each data set should have comments/calculations in the following areas:

  1. - after applying online flags, is there enough data on each source?
  2. - is the amplitude gain stable (i.e. no jumps you couldn't attribute to weather)
  3. - is the phase gain stable (i.e. no jumps you couldn't attribute to weather)
  4. - optional: check delays. Are there fewer than 4 turns across a 128 MHz subband.
  5. - bandpass: any significant change over time
  6. - polarization quality (if applicable). Jumps or other oddities in RL/LR amplitude/phase vs time.
  7. - major RFI
  8. - frequencies as requested
  9. - Check the fraction of 'zeros'. If you use AIPS, FITLD will tell you. If not, visual inspection usually gives you an idea if the problem is bad (> a few %)
  10. - Check for missing scans. The easiest way to spot this is a skip in scan numbers in CASA; in most cases there is a gap in the time range as well. Missing scans also trigger the following error message during importevla or importasdm:

WARNING ERROR: No data retrieving for this SDM mainTable row SDMDataObjectReaderException : Could not open file 'AT378_sb1230711_1.55297.701195312504/ASDMBinary/uid___evla_bdf_X1'. The message was 'No such file or directory'

Data Release to PIs

Once you have made sure that the data passes all items on the checklist the data can be released to the observer. Do this by e-mailing the observer and please cc: me (gvanmoor@nrao.edu) on this e-mail. The e-mail should include at least the following:
  1. - the data are available from the archive; use either basic or advanced archive search as explained on http://science.nrao.edu/evla/archive/evla, and sign in by clicking on the second line from the top of the resulting page
  2. - the data has passed an inspection for obvious errors. It is a good idea to include your comments in the JIRA ticket
  3. - further data inspection/flagging/editing may be required
  4. - Time averaging works - however, a small fraction of the data is exactly zero and we don't recommend time averaging since it will mask the presence of those data
  5. - Remind them to check the operator log at http://www.vla.nrao.edu/cgi-bin/oplogs.cgi
  6. - Tell them we welcome feedback on the data quality

Meetings

-- Main.Gustaaf van Moorsel - 05Apr10
Topic revision: r8 - 2010-04-14, gvanmoor
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