Date:

Time: 13:00 ET 

Link to Video recording

Passcode: F6f!Kxwg

**********TO DO LIST IN ADVANCE OF NEXT MEETING**********

  1. CIRADA catalog and image products follow-up - Greg. Sivakoff
  2. Polarimetry progress report request from Jennifer and Lerato - K.N.
  3. Image headers - Juergen Ott
  4. Email request for interest in having a AAS splinter session on High-resolution radio surveys - K. N.

 

General:

    1. New leadership structure (announced last month!)
      • SSG co-chair: Chenoa Tremblay


VLASS News:

  1. Observing and data processing status: Amy Kimball and Mark Lacy
    • VLASS3.2 48% observed, 35% imaged, mean latency 15d (~ 1 week less than prior campaigns at this stage).
    • SE imaging (~25% of Epoch 2.1 done!)
    • Proposed image metadata update here
    • Algorithm update?
      • GPU gridder
        • Bargains on used GPUs?
      • Improvements to CPU-based algorithms
        • Parallelization improvements
    • External processing by a couple of groups
      • U. Wisconsin
      • DoD/NRL (still a longshot . . . )


  1. Science highlights:
    • COSMIC’s observing with Epoch 3.1 (in progress; Chenoa Tremblay)
    • Technical memo on strange RFI found with COSMIC
    • Ballieux+24 https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.13346 (peaked spectrum sources - subset identified using VLASS+NVSS+LoTSS and NVSS+LoTSS+LoLSS. Allowed a comparison of MPS and GPS sources.)
    • DRAGNS + spectral index asymmetries (in progress; Rachael Howard)
    • Stellar transients (in progress; Dillon — GRS thinks it is close to being done)
    • RS CVNs (in progress; Greg S.)
    • CLAGN (Charlotte Ward)


Events/Outreach:


Future of CIRADA: (To be discussed in detail at the next meeting; unofficial discussion led by Greg Sivakoff)

    • Overview:
      • Funding ends at the end of 2024
      • Eric R. - working head of CIRADA; email him (M. Lacy already in regular contact)
    • Questions:
      • Production plan for catalogs?
        • Epoch 3 quick look catalog?
          • Check on 3.1
          • To date, all catalogs have been done on N.1 + N.2, not just N.1
      • Data hosting plan?
        • CIRADA will still ingest and host images from epoch 3, etc.
      • Polarization processing?
        • TBD . . . 
        • CanDIAPL (Canadian Data Intensive Astrophysics Platform) is a followup on CIRADA. It has an SKA pathfinders concentration, and not VLASS.
        • Analysis tools were developed in support of POSSUM already, but needs to be tested
        • Jennifer West and Lerato - update


  1. VLASS Epoch 4
    • Transitioning proposal to a paper 
    • (ML) date of review now fixed for Sept 17th (for presenters: draft presentations due Sept 3rd, internal review Sept 6th, presentations available to committee Sept 10th).
    • Discuss open questions/outcomes for 4th epoch review
      • Questions:
        • Is the scientific case for a 4th epoch strong enough to justify the VLA time/staff resources?
        • Is the data processing plan realistic?
        • Will VLASS remain competitive with other surveys/future instruments?
        • Could VLASS observing and data processing for Epoch 4 be optimized?
  • Outcomes:
    • The 4th Epoch should be carried out in full 
    • Only VLASS 4.1 should be observed
      • Entirety of 1.1 would need to be imaged with awproject to fix antenna pointing errors
    • No further observations should be made 
  • Notes:
    • What about holes in sky coverage? (Heinz)
      • No holes, only QL rejects (but some (most?) expected to be recoverable in SE processing)
      • “Complete coverage” not an unmet requirement (requirement was 90% coverage)
    • What are the weak points of the 4th epoch proposal?
      • (Greg S.) - No plan for rapid processing of VLASS epochs 1-3 . . . . 
    • Data - Can we process it? https://science.nrao.edu/science/science-program/large-proposals
    • Overlap with other surveys: e.g. LSST, LS4( https://sites.northwestern.edu/ls4/) 
    • Concern: E4 is incremental by nature .. . 
    • Counterpoint: Focus on framing E4 in the context of the changing landscape of multiwavelength surveys (LSST, Roman, Euclid, etc. + Einstein Probe . . . La Silla Southern Sky Survey . . .)
    • Still plenty of discovery space for slow radio transients   (e.g. TDEs . . .); some transients found by LSST will have delayed radio flares


  • Talk: “The VLASS Transient Pipeline” - Dillon Dong (follow-up questions)


  • Overview:
    • Progress on Dillon’s real-time transient pipeline is underway
    • Transient candidates posted to website
    • Greg Sivakoff’s institution is supporting some of the computing/processing
    • Summer student will be working on the pipeline
    • Source classes of interest?  Have a filter for identifying sources of interest?  Dillon can send you automated updates when new sources are identified


Future meetings: (subject to change; check your email/Slack for updates)

    • August 19 at 1pm EDT / 11am MDT / 17:00 UTC
    • September 9 at 1pm EDT / 11am MDT / 17:00 UTC
    • October 7 at 1pm EDT / 11am MDT / 17:00 UTC



######################################################################

Reference material:

  • Terms of reference document: pdf 
  • VLASS Slack workspace and SSG channel (contact Bryan Gaensler)
  • Confluence page
  • No labels