VLASS SSG Meeting Notes
- VLASS News:
- Observing and data processing status – Amy Kimball
- About 50% of VLASS3.1 has been observed. Re-prioritization to accommodate other A-priority observations in the queue was implemented recently.
- Some data processing software infrastructure challenges have been encountered
- ~15% of QL images (Epoch 2) are out
- Automated QA is going fantastically! → extension to SE imaging
- Commensal surveys
- VCSS - Wendy Peters
- Antenna configuration challenges (affecting PSF quality)
- Processing in progress
- COSMIC - Chenoa Trembley
- Data being recorded during VLASS
- Calibration/pipelines working well
- Extending to other bands beyond S
- CIRADA updates – Bryan Gaensler
- Lerato and Biny making progress with polarimetry and catalog vetting
- Polarization - Jennifer West
- Transients - Dillon Dong
- Catalog paper in progress (with Yuyang Chen)
- Science highlights
- Any new papers? - everyone
- Idea from Steve: have a channel on Slack with papers?
- VLASS website compilation of science papers (track citations to Lacy+20)
- Selected papers of interest (need more SSG input from topics besides AGN and transients):
- Radio AGN morphologies (Gopal-Krishna et al. 2023): https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023arXiv230210214G/abstract
- Fermi unassociated Gamma ray sources (Bruzewski et al. 2023): https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023ApJ...943...51B/abstract
- TXS 1433+205: The most distant gamma-ray emitting FR II radio galaxy (Paliya et al. 2023): https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023MNRAS.520L..33P/abstract
- Pulsar Wind Nebula (Dong & Hallinan 2023): https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022arXiv220611911D/abstract
- Science presentation - Dillon Dong (NRAO)
- Title: “VT 1137-0337: A flat-spectrum radio transient consistent with an emerging pulsar wind nebula”
- Background: PWN candidate identified through a search for VLASS transients relative to FIRST (involves automated filters and visual vetting to find transients)
- Prediction: 10-100 PWN should be observable in VLASS w/in 200 Mpc. Why haven’t we detected them yet?
- Events:
- Conferences of interest?
- Scientific Frontier and Synergies for the DSA-2000 Radio Camera
- March 20-22, 2023
- NVIDIA GTC
- March 20-23, 2023
- New Eyes on the Universe: SKA and ngVLA
- May 1-5, 2023
- Splinter session update for AAS #242 (June 2023) – Steve Myers
- No need to be a AAS member to attend, will be hybrid
- Current plan:
- 2 X 2 hour sessions (morning and afternoon)
- Avoid: Sunday before meeting (that’s when VLA tour is happening) and Thursday (last day)
- Question: SSG members planning to attend AAS #242?
- Dillon Dong
- Chenoa Trembley
- Emil Polisensky (NRL; can support technical/science applications with VCSS)
- Focus: science + using sky survey,
- New featured data: Unveiling the single epoch cubes, polarimetry, combining with other surveys
- Draft of splinter session summary to be sent around by email by Steve (comments wanted, due March 9)
- RADIAL student involvement - Dillon
- VLASS summer student science project ideas (looking for collaborators)
- Stellar radio transients (highly polarized)
- Have someone who knows how to run the user defined pipeline teach the students
- Steep spectrum emission from pulsars (using VCSS), follow-up with polarimetry, GBT, etc.
- Shami: develop a “scoring system” for candidate pulsars based on properties. See VLASS survey proposal
- Important: Use splinter session as learning opportunity for RADIAL students (and more broadly for students in general who are using VLASS data for their summer projects/thesis work)
- January AAS special session?
- Limitation: computing and personnel limited, need to pick which single epoch images to prioritize
- Question to SSG: what tiles should be prioritized for SE imaging?
- Sources with known polarization properties?
- Galactic plane?
- Surveys?
- Stripe 82
- Community call for proposals on what targets/fields to prioritize?
- SE polarization cube demonstration release - Mark Lacy
- VLASS Epoch 4 discussion (Postponed to a future meeting)
- New synergy opportunities with Roman, LSST, etc.
- Main science drivers:
- Transients
- Discovery of TDEs, SNe, etc.
- Radio AGN life cycles (decade-long cadence necessary)
- Faint star-forming galaxies
- New commensal opportunities
- COSMIC
- VCSS
- REALFAST
- Tentative SSG proposal deadline: January 2025
- Next meeting: Monday, April 3th at 1pm EST / 11am MST / 18:00 UTC
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Reference material:
- Terms of reference document: pdf
- VLASS Slack workspace and SSG channel (contact Bryan Gaensler)
- Confluence page
- Next meeting: Monday, April 2nd at 1pm EST / 11am MST / 18:00 UTC