- VLASS News:
- Observing and data processing status: Amy Kimball and Mark Lacy
- Re-observed images (total of 60-70) will be replacing some Epoch 3.1 QL products
- Old image versions will remain available on NRAO’s VLASS webpage (could be useful for checking for rare day-week-long transients that might have appeared between initial and re-observation)
- Issue: tile definitions and survey status document is used by the community and needs to be updated
- Action item: SSG member (Greg Sivakoff) will submit help desk ticket (select VLASS as topic), and NRAO (Amy/Mark) will track it.
- Request: Text file of image phase centers and observing times would be useful to community
- Straightforward to do by scraping the fits headers in the image cache
- Events:
- Splinter session update for AAS #242 (June 2023) – Steve Myers
- Preliminary schedule
- Action item: Add registration information to this webpage
- Action item: Collect Jupyter notebooks and create a place for them on the splinter session webpage
- EVERYONE: Send any VLASS Jupyter notebooks (e.g. Dillon’s notebook on image coordinate searches) that may be useful for the meeting to Steve
- Flyer: Flyer link here
- Purpose?
- Hard copies @ AAS
- Brian will send email about all NRAO events happening at AAS
- NRL interested in creating a companion flyer for VLITE/VCSS
- Other conferences?
- Updates from working groups (please send by email/Slack or add here directly):
- Extragalactic - Kate Alexander, Heinz Andernach
- Galactic - Laurant Loinard, Adam Ginsburg
- Transients - Gregg Hallinan, Greg Sivakoff
- Polarization - Bryan Gaensler, Jennifer West
- Commensal - Wendy Peters, Chenoa Tremblay
- Data Products - Dillon Dong, Erik Rosolowsky
- Science communication - Brian Kent, Eric Murphy
- EPO - Jacob Noel-Storr, Summer Ash
- Other topics?
- Science presentation:
- VLASS Epoch 4 - Dillon Dong
- Presentation slides: here
- Key strength of a VLASS Epoch 4: optical transient associations leveraging new multiwavelength surveys (Rubin)
- Relativistic transients (GRBs, jetted TDEs)
- AGN (obscured/high-z)
- Rare Galactic transients
- Suggested approach: ½ epoch
- Focus on the VLASS/Rubin overlap region (17k sq deg)
- Effectively half of a full VLASS epoch (only requires one config cycle)
- Comments/questions:
- 4th epoch would help disentangle explosive/non-explosive transients better than 3 epochs (can we quantify this despite unknown structure function for white paper?) - Greg
- Keep northern sky too (and do a full 4th epoch) b/c radio transients can be delayed by a couple of years - Kate
- Full sky footprint would have lots of extragalactic science (ZTF) - Mark
- Infrastructure would be much easier to implement if survey footprint stays the same - Amy
- Value/impact of large observatory projects like VLASS compared to PI science? - Greg
- Can be evaluated objectively based on publication records
- Hurdles to acceptance? - Greg
- SSG tasked with developing the science case in a white paper
- Additional discussion topics (ran out of time during meeting):
- VLASS Epoch 4!
- Science pitch write-up by Mark Lacy: here
- Overleaf draft of SSG's white paper on VLASS Epoch 4 - Kristina Nyland
- Action item: Kristina will incorporate text from science pitch/Dillon’s presentation into white paper draft for next meeting
- SE Image prioritization
- Input on request form?
- Future meetings:
- Monday, June 12, at 1pm EST / 11am MST / 17:00 UTC
- Wanted: SSG co-chair to help run meetings from July-October
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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, May 22nd at 1pm EST / 11am MST / 18:00 UTC