Future Meeting dates (usually last Wed of the month):
2020 Dec 9 @ 1500 UTC (avoiding Thanksgiving in US, anticipating no late Dec meeting)
2021 Jan 20? (a week earlier than nominal)
General Admin
General Status w.r.t. Coronavirus measures
NRAO/ALMA:
NRAO in North America will continue to work@home for foreseeable future (well into 2021). Infections rates increasing across US; NM now worse than ever...
ALMA developing array restart plans, expected to take many months. Resume science observing in March 2021?
ASTRON/JIVE
Science/computing staff continuing work-at-home for now
CASA Release Schedule
CASA 5.7/6.1: Has been released (2020 Aug 20). Patch releases pending:
CASA 6.1.1 for ALMA PL being exercised; working on a repeatability issue
CASA 6.1.2(/5.7.x?) w/ polcal and tec fixes (VLASS, ALMA) pending. 6.1.1 vs. 6.1.2 discrepancy (probably same as above?)
(George) TBD: Complete re-numbering to better align with prioritization exercise from May 2020 (Some urgency, so we can share and update)
(George, Justin) TBD: Need to forward Requirements Doc and prioritization to Jen Donovan-Meyer, as input to Stakeholder process for CASA 5.9/6.3
(Justin) "VLBA 5-year Plan for CASA" (There is also a "VLA CASA 5-year plan" materializing, via Josh Marvil)
(George) This is great, as it enables CASA to be more proactive / less reactive as upstream developments materialize. CASA will mainly rely on instrument staff for (at least) initial impression of what has implications for downstream processing, but fantastic to be part of ~early conversations and evaluation. This is long overdue, IMO.
(Justin) Short instrument talks in Nov 18 stakeholder meetings, some technical detail included
DIY casa5 tarball build instructions can be found here
casa6 build issues: formal instructions for plotms, CASAshell, casa5/6 co-exist, c++ unit tests in casa6
Meetings/workshops of relevance
CASA User Committee: 2020 Oct 20-23 (virtual)
Committee encouraged by VLBI efforts, including commitment by NRAO to seek additional development funding for VLBA. Need fringefit soln plotting for CASA6!
Ilse's main comments:
Release schedule/management much improved
Fringe-fit solution plotting!
VLBA dev support ambitions appreciated (will need to evolve balance of work with JIVE)
Impressed with ngCASA efforts (NRAO-centric at the moment, how to expand?)
Doc changes good
Ryan?
ngCASA: International collab == endless debate? No, just need to be decisive. Once main infrastructural decisions made, tent will expand...
WCS replacement complicated, will likely involve collaboration
Aggregate cal plotting... (Bietenholz)
OTF aggregation desirable for performance, could feed plotting.... (though cal type specificity and time vs. freq dependence interesting)
JIVE VLBI Workshop 2020 Nov 2-6. (virtual)
Next week! Attendance capped at 200!
Collaborate with NRAO/VLBA in future workshops? Maintain communication on this...
Over coming months/year, Justin to work on VLBA tutorials based on recent JIVE efforts, anticipating CASA/VLBA tutorials at next NRAO Synthesis Summer school (2022)