Agenda
MINUTES in bold
CASA/JIVE VLBI Coordination Meeting
2019 January 16 @ 1500UTC
Attendance: George, Mark, Des, Ryan, Neal, Walter
Logistics
- NRAO Shutdown status
- Probably ok through most of February
- Update (2019Jan17):
- Basic NRAO operations (with some restrictions on procurement, travel after Feb 1, etc.) now funded through 2019 Feb ~20
- Atlassian servers (jira, bit-bucket, bamboo, confluence) have been identified as essential infrastructure for international colleagues in general, and will be maintained during any actual shutdown
- Future Meeting dates (usually last Wed of the month):
- Next meeting: 2019 Feb 20 @ 1500UTC. Pending MK availability and NRAO shutdown status (MK is available).
- 2019 Mar 27 @ *1400*UTC (Daylight savings begins 2019 Mar 10 in USA, 2019 Mar 31 in JIVE)
- 2019 Apr 24
- 2019 May 29
- 2019 Jun 26?
- 2019 Jul 31?
General Admin
- Important upcoming CASA 5.5 dates
- Bug fixes / Validation complete: 2019 Jan 31
- Release: 2019 Feb 18
- CASA 6 (release: 2019 Apr 19): migrate task/tool interfaces to assure same scientific support as CASA 5.5
- CASA 5.6/6.1 dates pending (requirements due by ~end of January)
- Likely: Feature freeze: 2019 Jun 01, Release: 2019 Jul 17
- CASA 5.6 Confluence page (placeholder, will be populated in coming weeks, try JIRA login to access)
- Resources from "ESCAPE" for CASA-VLBI development
- New EU-funded project for scientific infrastructure (incl. CERN, SKA, etc.), with emphasis on cloud computing (Jupyter NB)
- Will support Des's VLBI development contributions, alongside RINGS
- Merge of JIVE Workshop Issues List with older NRAO VLBI Req doc
- (NB: Ilse on leave, currently...)
- Urgency vis-a-vis CASA 5.6...
- Mark now to take first stab at collation of requirements,
- First glance indicates many seem already satisfied (these items to be maintained as complete in the ultimate document)
- Will identify items appropriate for consideration for 5.6 asap (Feb 1)
Verification/Validation/Documentation
- Status of testing and merges for 5.5
- In good shape with expected refant-related (faulty merge corrected), convergence criterion, and digital correction items
- Pull request hiccup? (Des) CAS-12180 (refant list), pull request pending.
- New flagging-related bug (Des)
- CAS-12192, bug specific to fringe-fit solutions, but related to polarization-dependent flagging (CAS-695)
- CAS-9965: UVFITs export documentation: GC, TY exporte not yet supported?
- Confirmed, but thought not urgent to introduce this support, since these relate to early calibration steps now possible in CASA
Development/Features
- "perscan" interpolation options (Mark)
- Relevant when linear interpolation over-flags data due to flagged solutions in isolated scans.
- Adds a dimension to the calibration "patch panel" mechanism within the calibration apply infrastructure, rather like existing 'perobs' constraint. Has been previously discussed, but this granularity not thought important until now.
- George to investigate prospects further, likely only in callibrary infrastructure
- RINGS-related issues (Mark)
- Extremely wide bandwidth support, including not-fully sampled
- Dispersive delay solutions
- Items to push for CASA 5.6/6.1 development
- (George) Look into correlation-dependent flagging issue (CAS-695)
- Keen to abandon "workshop branch" (CAS-10684) when this (and user control of convergence iteration) disposed of
- (Mark/Des) Any residuals from 5.5 work (rereferencing, convergence criterion, alternate refant, digital corrections)?
- (Walter) Advanced VLBA Amplitude calibration a la Walter memo from a few years ago
- Bandpass normalization flexibility: voltage vs. power
- accor solutions applied to ACs? (should already be true, else a bug)
- (Des) Baseline stacking
- (Des) Wide bandwidth and dispersive (see above)
- (George) perscan interpolation option (see above)
- (Mark) Some items may emerge from Mark's requirements collation process.
AOB?
- Verification testing: Mark asks for template or examples
- Neal will provide link to existing tests in the CASA 6 repository (where verification test focus lies)
- Neal's Link
- CASA User Committee encourages "investing in making CASA fully VLBI-capable and securing resources to maintain this capability for the longer term" in the context of the VLBA's return to NRAO management and SRDP.
- This recommendation occurs in "External Contributions" section; probably is designed to prompt a more direct resource commitment from NRAO.
- Ryan to circulate draft response