General:
- SSG membership/organization - Mark
- No more working group chairs (everyone is a member at large)
- Mark will update Charter before the next SSG meeting on March 4
- Survey results - Kristina
- Preferred meeting cadence: monthly
- Talk topics of interest: science, AI/ML/automation, pipelines
- Focus area: promoting VLASS to the community, including at conferences
VLASS News:
- Observing and data processing status: Amy Kimball and Mark Lacy
- Tile summary and observing status document updated
- Phase decorrelation identified in some Quick Look images; a warning will be added to Quick Look documentation (https://science.nrao.edu/vlass/data-access/vlass-epoch-1-quick-look-users-guide)
- Development of QA for SE images is progressing; disk space still an issue (Amy)
- Science highlights:
- 392 citations to Lacy+20
- Highest redshift (z = 7.7) AGN found in VLASS so far: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024ApJ...961L..25L/abstract
- Timothy Yiu et al. 2023 - radio stars paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.07162
- Blazars: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.04009.pdf
- Events:
- RADIAL/CHTC meet-up at AAS 244 - Yjan Gordon organizing, Brian Kent and Mark Lacy will be at the meeting as well. Others?
- “Rare GEMS in Big Data” - https://noirlab.edu/science/events/websites/rare-gems-2024
- SPARCS meeting - show is presenting VLASS? Let Yjan Gordon know if you’re interested!
- HEAD meeting? (Greg, Kate will be there; Kate will highlight VLASS)
- IAU in Cape Town - deadline is March 1 for abstracts and early registration
- Next ADASS meeting will be in Malta in November. Please express what astro/computing topics you would like showcased at the meeting in Malta:
- Talk: “VLASS Data Product Update” Mark Lacy
JRC: I think, while AW-project works, there are more efficient codes out there to deal with the w-terms. I understand the desire to keep this within the CASA framework but there have been lots of development in speeding w-term corrections up (e.g. WSClean, IDGridder) etc (e.g. https://github.com/darafferty/rapthor). I think we should fold in Andre Offringa in this.
Just got feedback from Andre and my PhD student: “AWimager is order of factor of a few faster than AW-project for smaller images or 10-100 for large images, certainly when also MSMF deconvolution is necessary”.
- The Epoch 4 white paper has been submitted to Tony Beasley and is posted on the VLASS white papers webpage here
Review plan:
- The current draft is being used for internal review within NRAO now
- NRAO will conduct an external review of the Epoch 4 proposal in late summer
- Revisions are due by the end of April.
Feedback:
- The transient science case needs to be amplified
Discussion questions:
- How can we strengthen the transient science case?
- What are the key areas of opportunity for identifying radio transients and challenges to success?
- Rapid identification of multiwavelength counterparts to VLASS transients and variables needed.
- “Prompt” catalogs
- No public software for identifying VLASS is available.
- TBD
Priorities for revisions:
- Figures, including a clear graphic motivating the transient case
- Logistics/implementation review (everyone)
- Updated citation rate/author distribution plots (B. Kent)
- Additional input/details on:
- Multi-messenger synergy (G. Shroeder?)
Future meetings: (subject to change; check your email/Slack for updates)
- Transients: Feb 26 at 1pm EST / 11am MST / 17:00 UTC
SSG: March 4 at 1pm EST / 11am MST / 17:00 UTC
- SSG: April 15 at 1pm EST / 11am MST / 17:00 UTC
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Reference material:
- Terms of reference document: pdf
- VLASS Slack workspace and SSG channel (contact Bryan Gaensler)
- Confluence page