TTA Tools: Wednesday, 2 pm MT, 4 pm ET, 07 November 2018

Logistics

Agenda

• Action Items from 31 October 2018 Meeting
  1. AmyMioduszewski will ask BryanButler about including an ephemeris at the proposals stage and VLA scheduling.
  2. LorantSjouwerman will think about a better way to specify the array configurations needed.
  3. JeffKern will check what the SRDP requirements committee had to say about V polarization.
  4. AnandCrossley will start to prepare a list of metrics related to TTA that we can discuss within the current framework.
• SRDP Specification (continue)
  • https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/pub/Software/TTAToolsMinute31Oct2018/Specification_of_Science_Ready_Products_in_the_PST.pdf
• AOB

Minutes

• Ephemeris. AmyMioduszewski received the following feedback from BryanButler: it is not necessary to include the emphemeris in the PST, but instead the proposer could pick some dates and provide an LST range. The emphemeris could be put in later before the scheduling. After some discussion we see no reason not to include the empheris in the PST. The PST should include the ephemerides of standard Solar System objects. For triggered proposals the user would just specify and LST range of 0-24 hr as they do in the current PST.
• SRDP and VLA configurations. JeffKern had proposed that the user specify the following: frequency, spatial resolution, largest angular scale (LAS), target rms, and field of view (FOV). LorantSjouwerman stressed that you cannot guarantee they will get what they want since it depends on things like the declination (e.g., non-circular beam). This is true of any sparse array and different than ALMA. He suggests that we give them options to choose from to determine the configuration(s). There are also many details that will determine the imaging (e.g., natural weighting versus uniform weighting). MarkClaussen notes there is a distinction between the requirements for observations and imaging. The important thing to capture is that we specify the observations that will allow us to produce the data products. SRDP will make some assumptions on how to produce the image, but the user can always run things through the pipeline again. We were not able to converge on how best to specify the data products that will be sufficient to choose the configuration. LorantSjouwerman will attempt to flesh out his ideas and send an email for discussion before the next meeting.
• SRDP for the VLBA. We briefly discussed the parameters necessary for the VLBA. This is also a sparse array but it is fixed which makes things simpler. There are cases where a proposer only requires a subset of the array.
• Action Item.
  1. LorantSjouwerman will attempt to flesh out his ideas and send an email for discussion before the next meeting.