2022-07-01 Meeting notes

Agenda

• News

  • E-news articles (VLASS draft below)
• Program Administration 
  • SSA quarterly planning requirements due today (check  Requested Projects)
  • UC talks -
    • Tony/Jeff for SRDP (slides from John)
    • Mark for VLASS
• Project Management
  
  • Review Action Items 
  • Next meeting: review SRDP progress against the project roadmap (Bob out today)
• RADIAL update
• Science Ready Data Products
  • Imaging pilot 
    • VLA pipeline images in the archive
      • Both tt0 and tt1 seem to be primary products
      • no way to get the weblogs/ancillary products
      • prioritize for archive dev?
    • VLA pipeline image naming convention
      •  do we like e.g. 22A-068.MJD59746.95295547454.NGC4631_sci.C_band.cont.I.tt0.fits?
      • may need a different plan for VUDI
  • Pipeline versions (WS can use different versions for VLASS and VLA).
• VLASS
  • VLASS Epoch 3 report received, will need to work on a response.
    • as expected, most concern was with the computing/resourcing plan for SE/CE imaging.
    • Also some comments on RADIAL (Secondary charge 5)
    • Tony suggested DAs could be paid overtime for a "surge" of a month or so (e.g. just before 3.1).
• AOB

VLA Sky Survey Update

Progress on the VLA Sky Survey (VLASS) was reviewed in May by an external panel led by Prof. Andrew Baker of Rutgers University, who chaired the original science community review of VLASS in 2015. The panel strongly endorsed observations for the 3rd epoch of the survey, that will start in January 2023. The panel also made several useful recommendations regarding the resourcing and timeline for delivery of the higher quality Single Epoch (SE) products, including the polarization cubes.

The VLASS project has recently begun producing Stokes I SE continuum images, which are a necessary prerequisite for polarization cube production. The SE continuum images are a significant improvement over the existing Quick Look images, and include self-calibration, better cleaning and spectral index information. The in-band spectral indices for these SE continuuum products are not intended to be highly-accurate, especially for extended emission, but spectral indices of unresolved, or barely resolved, source components with signal-to-noise > 30 should be accurate to +/- 0.2. The first few hundred SE images generated from VLASS2.1 observations are now available from the VLASS cache (archive-new.nrao.edu/vlass/se_continuum_imaging) and will be added to as resources permit. The pipeline for making the polarization cubes is now being validated, and cube production is expected to begin in August.