Date:
Time: 13:00 ET
Link to Video recording
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VLASS SSG Meeting Notes
Observing and data processing status – Amy Kimball, Mark Lacy
Epoch 3.1 is 72% observed
BnA at the end of May for the rest
QL imaging is 43% complete, automated QA going well
No more SE imaging yet
Updates from working groups:
Extragalactic - Kate Alexander, Heinz Andernach
New paper on arXiv:2303.12830 by Gordon+23 (DRAGN hunting)
Galactic - Laurant Loinard, Adam Ginsburg
Galactic pulsars (Shami + Dillon discussed at DSA-2000 meeting)
Transients - Gregg Hallinan, Greg Sivakoff
Deadline for abstracts in 2 weeks!
New transient identified by Yuyang Chen (point source inside galactic supernova remnant)
Dillon’s transient catalog is progressing, real time transient identification of transients coming soon to go after faster transient pops - open to ideas
Polarization - Bryan Gaensler, Jennifer West
New cubes being analyzed (pol + spectral indices from cubes; spix being compared with other CIRADA products)
POSSUM collaboration
New computing resources
Commensal - Wendy Peters, Chenoa Trembley
Data Products - Dillon Dong, Erik Rosolowsky
Science communication - Brian Kent, Erik Murphy
NRAO will send announcement today about activities at AAS, VLASS splinter
EPO - Jacob Noel-Storr, Summer Ash
VLA open house on April 1, public talks
Other topics?
CIRADA Epoch 2 VLASS catalog status?
Sidelobe detection between QL and SE under investigation . . .
Sidelobe probability/other flags for this catalog currently being explored
Science presentation - VLASS Epoch 4 (Mark Lacy)
- 1900 hr of time (in addition to 5600 hr for first 3 epochs)
- 4.1 would start in 2025, 4.2 in 2026/2027
- Science
- VLASS has demonstrated important new science on slow transients (especially via comparison to FIRST)
- Epoch 4 would allow us to reduce the gap between VLASS Epoch 1-2 and FIRST
- VLASS remains unique compared to other transient surveys in terms of resolution and frequency coverage
- Variations in polarimetry remains unexplored
- Slightly better SNR for faint sources in coadds (probe well into SF galaxy population with improved sensitivity)
- Logistics
- Improve commensal survey datasets (VCSS and COSMIC had some issues in 3.1)
- VLASS1.1 was compromised due to antenna pointing issues
- Key opportunity: VLASS could be a good transitional project from VLA to ngVLA, also complementary to DSA-2000 timescale (stepping stone)
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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