Agenda

CASA/JIVE VLBI Coordination Meeting

2022 Apr 20 @ 1400UTC

Logistics

• Future Meeting dates:
  
  • 2022 Apr 27, May 4,11,18 @ 1400 UTC Technical meeting options
    
  • 2022 May 25 @ 1400 UTC Coordination meeting
    
• NRAO zoom connection details:

General Admin

• General Status w.r.t. Coronavirus measures
  • NRAO/ALMA:
    
    • Omicron (BA.2) cases now rising in eastern USA....
      
  • ASTRON/JIVE
    • Omicron waves subsiding?
      
• Upcoming CASA Release Schedule
  
  • CASA 6.5.0: ~end of May
    
  • Release version OS/python matrix
• (Justin) Stakeholder prioritization - George to get Coord mtg view of 6.5 organized (in progress)
  
  • CASA 6.5 prioritization complete
    
• Documentation and related
  • (Des/George) Fringefit memo...status? George to add some general calibration context (cf for CASA VLBI paper)
    
  • (Ilse) CASA VLBI Paper planning...status?
  • (George) General CASA paper also progressing: Bjorn circulating penultimate draft to CASA group this week
  • (Justin) VLBA CASA Guide tutorial under construction
  • (Justin) VLBA CASA 5-year plan update
• CASA repo/build logistics
  • ?
• Misc. Admin
  
  • ?
• Meetings/workshops of relevance
  
  • NRAO 18th Synthesis Imaging Workshop: 2022 May 18-25. Entirely online. Includes 0.5 day tutorials on May23.
  • 9th VLA data reduction workshop 2022 Oct 11-20. Hybrid. (VLBA DR not ruled out, but not especially encouraged)
  • ERIS in September @ ASTRON/JIVE
• Other admin?
  • Urvashi now interim CASA Group Lead
    • NRAO DMS re-org also underway, including managing a few other departures/transitions
  • George to meet with Urvashi (Apr 21) to discuss general calibration development for 6.5, including work distribution for George, Neal, Jorge Lopez (CV), Victor Desouza (NM, ~June)

Development

• Ongoing maintenance/development CASA 6.5 JIRA (VLBI) Status
  
  • Ongoing for 6.5.x
    
    • (Mark, CAS-13266) Per-scan interpolation via overloading per-obs mechanism. (6.5.0)
      • (George) Missing calibration (per obs/scan/field/spw/ant) report revision in progress (report missing cal in data iteration rather than trying to predict).
        
    • (Des, CAS-13361) Polarization combination for fringefit. (6.5.0)
      
      • Awaiting validation
        
    • (Des, CAS-13718) Turn on uvrange parameter in fringefit (6.5.0)
      
      • Awaiting validation
        
    • (Des, CAS-12765) Efficiently combine widely-spaced spws in fringefit (6.5.0)
      • In validation (Janssen), probably combine with CAS-13266, possibly also with CAS-13361 and CAS-13718
    • (Mark, CAS-13700) Nant>255 in UVFITS export/import (6.5.0)
      
      • Needs validation at NRAO for AIPS compatibility (also miriad?)... George to discuss with Josh.
    • (Mark) Phase-cal measurements in MeasurementSet
      • Mark has circulated a new proposed definition for MS PHASE_CAL subtable for phase-cal data to VLBA for comments
        • Comments from VLBA needed, as that is main customer.
      • PCAL implementation probably first task for Victor Desouza (June+)
    • CAS-12485: OTF weight munging for solve (Can we complete validation and deploy? Maybe some interest at VLA in context of 6.5 planning (would need some generalization Des' code)?
    • (Des, CAS-13056) Overlapping solution intervals (6.5)
      
      • Review by George started; probably need to better isolate from existing iteration infrastructure
        
      • Exploring prospects for a more general VI2-based implementation that would permit this flexibility in all calibration. E.g., concurrent accumulation of overlapping solution intervals within time-averaging VI2 layer....

• • Planning for 6.5...

    • (Mark, CAS-13003). EOP update (6.5)
    • (George/Justin) CASR-463 (TEC) Need to follow-up on Justin's initial testing, which indicated edge (near-horizon) effects, spurious but cosmetic VLA-specificity, scientific differences in details? (Also some MeerKAT testing, via Bietenholz?) From recent helpdesk ticket: VLBI TEC work should include making it work for single- and dual-parallel hand operation (dispersive delay only), not just full-polarization context.
    • (George CAS-xxxxx) Resolved calibrators for polcal
    • (Neal? CAS-xxxxx) Manual intent-setting
  • Other/miscellaneous
    • (George, CAS-13287) AveragingTvi2 problems for certain conditions; under separate investigation (cf CAS-13466)

AOB

• ?