NRAO Applications Users Group Meeting - DRAFT MINUTES Date: 2007-01-10 (Wednesday) Time: 1300 MST (1500 EST) Video Hub: SOC-conf Rooms: SOC317/CV-ER311 ******************************************************************* Send corrections or additions to smyers 1. NAUG News o general news (Steve) We are continuing to have the weekly NAUG meetings to maintain momentum from the EVLA test. Next meetings are scheduled for Jan 17, Jan 24 (standard NAUG slot), and Jan 31. 2. CASA Status Report Standard items: o CASA status (Joe) - see main event o release status (Joe) - Next Alpha patch is scheduled for next Monday, Jan 15. o use and testing status (Steve, Mark, Joe) - We are set up for "User Support Fridays". Testers will be guaranteed support for testing on these days. Its a good time to do verification of any fixes that have occured and to follow-up on previous testing. The first one will be Jan 19. o development targets (Joe) - See project office page: http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu 3. ALMA - Debra says there is a new draft of the ALMA Offline Requirements document. Main changes are the addition of ACA and Single Dish requirements. See the SSR Wiki: http://almasw.hq.eso.org/almasw/bin/view/SSR/WebHome The document is under SoftwareSubsystemsDetailedRequirements: http://almasw.hq.eso.org/almasw/pub/SSR/SoftwareSubsystemsDetailedRequirements/offline.rqmts.ALMA-70.10.00.00-006-B-SPE.pdf Standard items: o ALMA Test status (Joe, Steve, Debra) - NAUG pre-testing for the ALMA test plus simulator testing will be held in Febrary at the AOC. Crystal will be out here Feb 4-10 and Rob Reid Feb 4-17 (with some time spent at the ATF). Steve will be at the AOC from LANL for all of February for testing also. - Debra says that external testers have started booking their flights for March. Joe quipped that at least the GBT Orion data set would be testable. - upcoming test ALMA2006.10-6 (+single dish analysis). See: https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/Software/AlmaTest5 http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/ALMA2007.03/ALMA2007.03.html o NAASC issues (John, Crystal) - CV will get CASA updates again starting Jan 19. Hopefully they will get the next Alpha patch (maybe when it comes out?). o ALMA development targets (Joe, Steve) - mosaicing and simulator developments (Kumar) Kumar is working actively on the simulator tool. Some outstanding bugs are being fixed. Currently only the construction of the ms given times, configuration and setup, use of images for the signal, and addition of noise are supported. Gain corruption (e.g. from atmosphere) is pending Georges calibration framework improvements. Once the toolkit is working, Joe will construct tasks. 4. EVLA Standard items: o EVLA test results (Joe, Michael) - see Main Event - Joe would like scripts from the testers so regressions can be done. - See: http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/EVLA2006.12/EVLA2006.12.html - Testing spreadsheet: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p9Q-V26qhzpmEtAF5AD4gOg o EVLA development plan & requirements - Sanjay is working on the pointing calibration and correction. Some possible test data sets have been identified. Stay tuned for when this should be available for general testing. 5. Main Event - Presentations and Discussion Items *************************************************************** - Joe McMullin : This will be a follow-up from last week, with reports on further progress. See: https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/Software/2007-Jan-10 Some issues / discussion that came up: o calibrator model images have now been made for some of the source/band combinations (was UKQ, more there now). These are casa model images made from the clean components and correctly scaled to the observing frequencies of the image header. Later on, the total fluxes will be scaled on-the-fly to the setjy values, for example when observing other frequencies, as is done in AIPS. o selection - a field parameter (rather than fieldid) has been added to clean, contsub, exportuvfits, flagdata, flagxy, ft, invert, mosaic, plotxy, setjy, split tasks. Currently this does automatic minmatch at front and end of string. It was pointed out this could be dangerous as something like 'W49' would match everything starting or ending with 'W49' such as W49, W49N, W49A, with no way to get only 'W49'. It was requested that this be changed to use explicit wildcards, e.g. 'W49*' or '*49' while 'W49' will match only that name. Joe confirmed he ran into a problem with antenna selection where "1" matched 1 as well as 10,11,12,... o error trapping has been implemented in all tasks o cleanbox parameter has been added to clean, mosaic. This takes a BLC,TRC list (to make easy pipelining) or a file name. This will support AIPS boxfiles, though currently it just takes lists of blc, trc in pixels or ra-dec. Circular "boxes" will be added. Ed requested offsets from field center also. Note that for ra-dec, the ra has HH:MM:SS while dec has DEG.MM.SS as is standard in CASA quanta. This could cause some confusion. Kumar comments: "Small clarification the ra-dec that the box takes can be in pixel or the usual possible quanta format e.g a blc trc pair can be (whatever you find more convenient) ['1.5 rad', '-1.5rad', '2.5rad', '-2.5rad'] or ['10h30m00.0', '-46d36m20.0', 10h31m00.0', '-45d30m00.0'] or ['10:30:00.0', '-46.36.20.0', '10:31:00.0', '-45.30.00'] or ['100pix' , '200pix', '150pix', '250pix'] or [100.0, 200.0, 150.0, 250.0] And on a less interesting note to blackbelt script wizards (those who would calculate the blc and trc by some fancy algorithm you don't need to use strings to pass blc trc but it should take the output of quanta tool too !)" Support for the AIPS BOXFILE cards like C and F will come eventually. Currently, these boxes must lie within the image being cleaned. Some thought needs to be put into how to handle facets and for flanking fields (ie. combine field and box specification in the boxfile?). Eventually interactive mask making will be added to a makemask task. o task history has been added, so that the parameter values are noted in such a way that this can be cut and pasted and run. tool history has been removed (presumably when tasks were run). Note that this is for tasks that change the dataset and thus are useful (e.g. not for summary tasks). o Still looking for comments on Urvashi's flagging tool proposal. See link on wiki page. https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/Software/2007-Jan-10 o documentation - the cookbook is quite fluid now, with Joe updating minor things and more massive changes to come when Mark and Michael return from AAS. The daily versions should be up-to-date, but beware printing out these versions. Joe will point out good times to print the cookbook between major revisions. Ed asked about the "inline" help (e.g. via help or inp), and Joe requested info on needed changes there. o It was noted that we have not yet purchased a cluster, but are able to use Martin Pokorny's cluster for some tests now. o Steve requested a "casapy -nologger" option to not bring up the logger GUI, for use remotely. See also: Testing spreadsheet: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p9Q-V26qhzpmEtAF5AD4gOg *************************************************************** Future Topics o Flagging (ms) implementation plan (George) o Clusters and CASA o suggestions welcome 6. AIPS++ Developments - see latest targets and info at Project Office: http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/ 7. Upcoming meetings and deadlines: o 2007 Feb 1 ALMA pre-testing starts o 2007 Feb 5-9 NAUG pre-testing at AOC o 2007 Mar 5 ALMA external test starts The agendas for past NAUG meetings are archived at: http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/naug/agenda/ The minutes for past NAUG meetings are archived at: http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/naug/minutes/