Agenda

Minutes in BOLD

CASA/JIVE VLBI Coordination Meeting

2019 April 24 @ 1400UTC

Logistics

• Future Meeting dates (usually last Wed of the month):
  • Next meeting: 2019 May 29, 1400UT
  • 2019 Jun 26? (Mark has conflict)
  • 2019 Jul 31? (George has conflict)
  • 2019 Aug 28?

General Admin

• CASA 5.5
  
  • Release pending (VLASS and related imaging fixes in progress)
  • CASA 6.0 now to coincide with CASA 5.6
• CASA 5.6/6.0
  
  • Requirements process complete, see CASA 5.6 Confluence page
  • Feature freeze: 2019 Jun 07; for other dates, see Confluence page
    • Public CASA 5.6/6.0 release possible no earlier than mid-July; ALMA/EVLA pipeline release by Oct 1.
  • (Mark) CASA 6 build environment?
    • Good progress, only minor documentation problems; Mark to connect with Darrell as needed.
    • Non-parallel build process slow/tedious; a fix for this is in the works in CV (Mehringer)
      
• Other admin?
  • CASA Newsletter imminent this week; too late for EHT-related article, but a congratulatory blurb included in Ryan's "Letter from the Lead"
  • EHT-related article planned for next newsletter, expected alongside CASA 5.6 public release
    

Development/Features

• (Mark) Requirements collation
  
  • Any news? (No)
  • Link (also available on main VLBI Coord page): ConsolidatedRequirements
• (Mark) New integration branch...status?
  • Done: CAS-12325
• Items for CASA 5.6/6.0 development (re-sorted)
  
  • (George) CASA 6 VLBI task interface verification
    • (Mark) fringefit task not present yet
      • Mark has patch, will coordinate merge with Bob Garwood
  • (George) Look into correlation-dependent flagging issue (CAS-695)
    • On George's CASA 5.6 todo list
  • (Des) Dispersive
    • LIkely for 5.6 delivery
    • Expand number of parameters in FringeJones table?
      • Should generalize FringeJones class to include this term, and make ingestion backward compatible; George to assess OTF ingestion compatibly based on past similar cases.
        
  • (Des) fringefit performance/stability issues traced to neglecting some terms in fit accumulations; now on track to validate for 5.6
  • (Des) Baseline stacking
  • (Des) Wide bandwidth
  • (George) perscan interpolation option? (Probably 5.7)
  • (George) consider overlapping solution intervals? (Probably 5.7)
  • (Walter) Advanced VLBA Amplitude calibration a la Walker memo from a few years ago
    • Bandpass normalization flexibility: voltage vs. power

Verification/Validation/Documentation

• (Mark) Testing of fringe fitting with a model... status?
  • Probably related to use of AIPS-generated convolved in image (in Jy/beam) for which AIPS extracts the CC list, whereas CASA expects unconvolved image (in Jy) and ignores any attached CC list. Jay Blanchard (now in Socorro) has relevant data
• (Mark) EVN archival data issue and importfitsidi... status?
  • TBD for now, as no urgent need recently.
• Other?
  • CASA calibration struggles with LOFAR MSs which have (trivial) SIGMA and WEIGHT columns using incremental storage managers that choke the sliced access used in VI2. Mark to discuss locally with Ger van Diepen.

AOB?

• (Added Des' work on fringefit performance/stability to Development/Features list above)