GBT Operations & Commissioning Meeting
AGENDA
Activities list
Last Week
=========
Observations for proposals
GBT06B-032, GBT06B-044, GBT06B-033,
GBT06C-032, GBT05B-011, GBT06B-034,
GBT06C-035, BB228 , GBT06B-036,
GBT06C-025, GBT06B-015, BB227 ,
GBT04A-027, GBT06B-028, BM253 ,
GBT06C-038, GBT06C-049, BB233 ,
GBT06B-019, GBT06C-019, GBT06A-071
Completed proposals
BB228, GBT06C-025
Next Week
=========
Observations scheduled for **
GBT04A-040 [ P ] Steve Myers
Anomalous Microwave Emission from Spinning Dust
Grains?
GBT06C-051 [F ] Lincoln Greenhill
Monitoring 2 NGC4258-like Masers: Measurement of
Distances / Constraint of LCDM
GBT06C-042 [F ] Jeremy Darling
Transit of Enceladus Across the Southern Radio
Lobe of 3C228
GBT06B-044 [ B] Robert Ferdman
Timing Binary and Millisecond Pulsars from the
Parkes Multibeam Survey
GBT06C-032 [ B] Peter Martin
The Galactic foreground at the North Ecliptic Pole
GBT05B-011 [ B] Toney Minter
Using Pulsar HI Absorption to Determine the
Distance to the Local Spiral Arm in the Second
Quadrant of the Galaxy
GBT05C-023 [F ] Fernando Camilo
PSR J1833-1034, the Very Young Pulsar in the SNR
G21.5-0.9
GBT06B-036 [F ] Jim Jackson
Pre-stellar evolution in Infrared Dark Cloud Cores
GBT06C-102 [ P ] Wouter Vlemmings
The youngest water-fountain source OH17.7-2.0 ?
GBT06B-015 [ P ] Larry Morgan
NH3 and CCS Mapping of Triggered Star Formation
Regions
GBT06C-048 [ B] Nissim Kanekar
HI 21cm absorption in strong MgII and CI
absorbers in the redshift desert
GBT06C-016 [F ] Fernando Camilo
Studying the magnetar XTE J1810-197
GBT06C-049 [ B] Karen Masters
Mapping Matter in the Nearby Universe with 2MASS
GBT06C-038 [ B] Jay Lockman
GBT Mapping of HI Clouds in the Disk-Halo
Interface
GBT04A-027 [FP ] Brian Mason
Determining the High Frequency Properties of mJy
radio sources
BB234 [F ] Edward Boyce
Investigating the Third Radio Source in B2319+051
GBT06C-039 [ P ] Jim Braatz
The Megamaser Cosmology Project: Circumnuclear
Disk Accelerations
GBT06B-018 [ B] Michael Kramer
Timing and General Relativity in the Double
Pulsar System
GBT06C-019 [FP ] Satoshi Yamamoto
Testing the Production Pathways of CCS
GBT05C-019 [ B] Tim Robishaw
The Galactic Arachnid in the Ursa Major Loop
** Scheduled as F-ixed, P-rimary, B-ackup
Contact Information for 12/28/2006 - 01/11/2007
=======================================
Proposal PI Bands Email [NRAO contact]
---------- ------------------ ----- --------------------
GC028 John Conway U jconway@oso.chalmers.se []
GBT06C-051 Lincoln Greenhill K greenhill@cfa.harvard.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT04A-040 Steve Myers XUB smyers@nrao.edu []
GBT06B-042 Nissim Kanekar 4 nkanekar@nrao.edu [Larry Morgan]
GBT06A-054 Paul Demorest 8 demorest@astron.berkeley.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06C-052 Scott Ransom S sransom@nrao.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06C-032 Peter Martin L pgmartin@cita.utoronto.ca [Jay Lockman]
GBT06B-034 Jacqueline van Gor L jvangork@astro.columbia.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT06A-013 Jim Braatz U jbraatz@nrao.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06C-012 Steve Curran 4 sjc@phys.unsw.edu.au [Carl Bignell]
GBT06A-014 Andrea Tarchi K a.tarchi@ira.inaf.it [Jim Braatz]
GBT05C-023 Fernando Camilo 8 fernando@astro.columbia.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06C-013 Steve Curran 4 sjc@phys.unsw.edu.au [Carl Bignell]
GBT06A-015 Sandrine Bottinell Q sandrine@ifa.hawaii.edu [Dana Balser]
GBT06C-058 Gary Fuller KUX G.A.Fuller@manchester.ac.uk [Larry Morgan]
GBT06B-037 Joel Weisberg L jweisber@carleton.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06C-026 Clive Dickinson U cdickins@astro.caltech.edu [Larry Morgan]
GBT06C-048 Nissim Kanekar 4 nkanekar@nrao.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06C-016 Fernando Camilo S fernando@astro.columbia.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT05C-026 Tom Devlin X devlin@physics.rutgers.edu [Brian Mason]
GBT04A-027 Brian Mason B bmason@nrao.edu [Brian Mason]
GBT06C-038 Jay Lockman L jlockman@nrao.edu [Jay Lockman]
GBT06C-017 Miles Blanton U mcb39@physics.unc.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT06C-039 Jim Braatz K jbraatz@nrao.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06C-018 Ingrid Stairs LS istairs@astro.ubc.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT06C-008 Raghunathan Sriana 4 anand@iucaa.ernet.in [Toney Minter]
GBT01A-005 Barry Turner Q bturner@nrao.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT06A-071 Fernando Camilo L fernando@astro.columbia.edu [Scott Ransom]
BB231 Jim Braatz K jbraatz@nrao.edu []
GBT05C-019 Tim Robishaw L robishaw@astro.berkeley.edu [Toney Minter]
Scheduled hours [backup]
========================
Category/Month-> December January
Astronomy ~ 581 [197] 554 [345]
Maintenance ~ 61 55 [068]
Test & Comm ~ 67 [017] 44 [012]
Shutdown ~ 36 0
Un-assigned ~ 5 98
Proposal Checkouts
==================
Awaiting checkout - 45
Active checkout - 0
On Hold - 15
Schedule - 66
Completed - 579
Current backlog [hours prior to 06C*] = 841
[2001:2(1), 2002:0(4), 2003:19(1), 2004:100(21), 2005:469(22), 2006:251(14)]
Backlog excluding 162 hrs of monitoring projects after 06C = 679
Total time to discharge [hours] = 3960
Includes 250 hours of monitoring after trimester 06C
* Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 06C
We supported 21 projects in 32 observing sessions, with 4 VLB runs. The telescope was also scheduled for 12.5 hrs of maintenance, 8 hrs of Q-band commissioning, 3.5 hrs of servo tests and 3.5 hrs of software tests.
No cookies this week since we lost 17 hrs, about 11% of the time scheduled for observing and commissioning. The causes of lost time were very varied:
- Temperatures < 0 F : 6.4 hrs
- Subreflector servo (2 instances) : 3.5 hrs
- Equipment room chiller : 2.4 hrs
- Wrong IF Target levels in a scheduling block : 1.3 hrs
- High Winds (3 instances) : 0.7 hrs
- Observer setting up for Arecibo observing : 0.7 hrs
- Astrid lockups (4 instances) : 0.5 hrs
- Prospero crash : 0.5 hrs
- Left over VNC servers : 0.3 hrs
- Failed GFM LPC transfers (3 instances) : 0.3 hrs
- Others (Grail, Data Capture, CLEO Status) : 0.6 hrs
Although a number of these problems were out of our control, some will soon be fixed with Astrid and GFM patches. But, there's a few ways we can reduce future instances of some of our other problems. For example:
- Support scientist will now be more aggressive in making sure observers will be told that they need to alter their IF Rack power-level targets. We're also creating an MR that will change the defaults target to those that Steve suggests.
- I suggest that instead of just killing VNC servers, we make first list the observer's name. The support scientist for the project should then email the observer explaining that leaving servers running is detrimental to other GBT observers.
- I've contacted the observer who was trying to simultaneously setup Arecibo and the GBT.
The Zpectrometer rack was removed on 8 December, and
Ku-band was reinstalled on 14 December, in the N8 turret slot.
Design work continues for the C-band integrated receiver package. Artwork was sent to two vendors, and the order should be placed soon.
A presentation and discussion of a PF dual-band feed concept was made on 14 December. The results and tradeoffs are being entered at:
http://wiki.gb.nrao.edu/bin/view/Electronics/DualBandPFfeed
We are putting together a test setup to do some measurements on cooled amplifiers suggested by the summer's results on the Ka and Q front-ends.
We are in week four of the eighth (and final) development cycle of 2006 which can be viewed at PlanOfRecordC82006. We are scheduled to release mid-February 2007. Items deemed ready for release before that time will be patched in after they have been fully tested.
Operational and user support was relatively light this week and included:
- We answered some questions regarding the Inclinometer Manager.
- Responded to issue with subreflector delta limits (turned out to be hardware).
- Provided user support for Tim Robishaw regarding previously acquired data.
- Investigated reported Tsys problem in the Spectral Line plugin to GFM.
- Provided user support for BrianMason regarding the use of LST in observing scripts.
We have been experiencing Accessor problems intermittently for the last few weeks. We have tracked these down to an issue with the number of connections being made to the Accessor. This issue was identified in the past and was resolved by sending an e-mail to gbtlocal requesting that staff limit their CLEO connections, i.e. please close your CLEO windows when they are not in use. Perhaps we should send a reminder e-mail regarding this?
We found the root cause of the previously reported Scan Coordinator core dumps. There was a place in the code where a string parameter of fixed size (scanLogEntry) was being copied from a smaller buffer. This caused a seg fault when the unmapped memory was accessed. We have no yet patched this into 6.6; we still need to test the fix on the production system.
A couple weeks ago, JimBraatz reported that GFM could not find a GO FITS file for a particular scan - even though one was created. Long story short, the Scan Log FITS file listed the "wrong" name for the GO FITS file. As it turns out, the GO FITS file was named correctly (i.e. after the start time of the scan). It was the other devices who got their FITS file names wrong. So, we found and fixed the algorithm for computing M&C device FITS filenames. We added the fix to our code base, but not into version 6.6 because a patch would require a re-install of all FITS writing daemons. This problem seems to happen very infrequenctly (i.e. Jim is the only one to have experienced this so far and only once), so we will most likely release this with the next version of M&C.
Modification Requests:
- MRs ready for integration/regression testing:
- GFM/Turtle Upgrade - Remove use of LPCs.conf file (ModificationRequest4C706)
- We will be releasing this on a maintenance day soon when the Astrid hang-up MR is ready for release.
- Investigate & Fix Cause of Astrid Hang-ups (ModificationRequest9C706)
- We tested a preliminary 6.6.1 version, but found several problems. Items from first test are now resolved and were re-tested on 7 Dec. Test 07 Dec results: We are still looking into an issue with unexpected LPC/LFC zeroing. We also experienced a hang when going on-line - GFM appears to get into a loop refilling the first and second scan of the project when going on-line. We are currently working to resolve these issues.
- MRs ready for sponsor testing:
- Modify SDFITS and aips++ to correctly process Spectrometer cross-polarization data (ModificationRequest2C706)
- This is done. BobGarwood will notify Robishaw so that he can test it out on his data. GFM works fine on this although we think we should change the Tsys calculation for xcorr data in the spectral line plug in.
- Change scaling for the Autocorrelation Spectra in the Spectrometer (ModificationRequest6C706)
- Done (except for documentation changes and release notes). Now in integration. GFM appears to work fine with these changes - note that because GFM displays total power values that these raw numbers are 2x larger than they were before these changes, as expected.
- MRs under development
- SDFits Changes - Add target position and HIGH_CAL keywords to sdfits and other requested sdfits changes (ModificationRequest3C706)
- Minor update to the MR after reflection on an e-mail from Robishaw (change in how the first 1024-lags will be used in x-corr case - checked but not fixed, just flagged if bad).
- GBTIDL Changes necessary in support of related sdfits tool changes (ModificationRequest8C706)
- Change GO fits file so that RA is in degrees (ModificationRequest15C705)
- Code commited in CVS. Must change Documentation.
- Develop New Pointing Pre-Processing Application (ModificationRequest5C706)
- We are testing pointing code refactored from GFM in online monitor mode, along with released GFM, comparing results to make sure nothing broke. We are also reviewing a related GFM LFC minor bug, since it's in the code-vicinity.
- MRs under CCC review:
- Other Activities:
- Dynamic Scheduling - We continued to work on test cases in the test database. We are done examining Weather: predicted winds vs. actual winds. We placed Tsys predictions in the test database and confirmed wind speed profiles and weather station information. We generated data for the test database and implemented a selection rule based on new wind criteria. We wrote a wiki page summarizing what's been implemented so far. We have begun the Object-Oriented Analysis for the software suite which attempts to capture the requirements as Object/Dynamic/Functional Models. Progress will be tracked on the Dynamic Scheduling Web.
- Balancing Project - MelindaMello and AmyShelton reviewed the MRs, which were updated by FrankGhigo. We have made modifications to them and added our comments. We have provided FrankGhigo with a list of 2 MRs that need to be written. One should be initially written by MelindaMello (Security daemon) and the other one (IF Rack) by FrankGhigo. The implementation of these MRs is expected in C1 of 2007.
- Zpectrometer Support - None this week.
- Servo Test Support & Analysis - JoeBrandt is working with the Servo group on changes for friction compensation. The MR for this has been updated and the code ready for servo testing. We are awaiting a sponsor signature from JohnFord.
- Track Model Support - JoeBrandt started a PTCS project note which describes the processing the antenna does to convert refracted az/el commands into servo commands, and vice-versa.
MIT/LL 43m Project -- Glen
- Two Engineers from MIT/LL were here last weekend, who did computer maintainance work.
- Normal Spacecraft tracking on Tuesday.
- Had a Brake Spring failure on Wednesday. Spring replaced.
- Last easily accessible spring was used.
- Normal Tracking on Thursday.
- Large MIT/LL crew will be in GB starting January 3, 2007
Our one night of Q-band tests this week were so successful that we've designated Q-band commissioning as being completed. Long integrations give excellent baselines and we have a new redshifted CO detection. System temperatures are exactly as predicted by the lab measurements. We determined that the receiver's useful frequency range is 39.2 to 49.8 GHz, a smidgen more than we hoped for. I'll try to bring in some of our results.
Ka-band CCB observations have started and have had some success. Q-band observations will start in a week or so.
To ease our installation schedule, Ku-band was installed this week instead of last week, as originally planned. Only two tasks now remain on our commissioning plans: Some planned PTCS tests and some new, follow-up Ka-band tests, both of which should happen next week. There will be a few extra Ka-band tests in January that might help us explore whether fast nodding is a practical way to improve Ka-band's baseline problems.
- Every month : Pointing -- 1 night/month except in November, A/B weather, dynamically scheduled.
-
Week of Sep 4 : C-band off telescope
- Week of Sep 11: Penn Array on telescope in C-band slot
- Sept 11 - Oct 27 : Penn Array commissioning -- 1 night/week, A-weather, dynamically scheduled. 8 nights max. Extended to Nov 7
- Sept : Ka-band, Q-band, Zpectrometer lab tests
- Week of Oct 2 - week of Oct 12 : Penn Array backup daytime engineering time : 4 day-times max.
- On or before week of Oct. 9 : Ka-band placed on telescope
- Oct 16 - Nov 13: Ka-band spectral-line commissioning -- 1 night/week, A-weather, dynamically scheduled. 3 nights max.
- Oct 16 - Nov 13: CCB quick checkout (2-3 hours), time permitting.
- Week of Oct. 23 (earlier if it's practical and if the astronomy schedule has no conflicts): Ku-band down, X-band moved to where Ku-band was, Zpectrometer on telescope where X was
- On or before week of Oct. 30 : Q-band on telescope
- Oct 31 : Fixed maintenance day for Zpectrometer checkout
- No later than week of Nov. 6 : Penn Array down, C-band up in its place. Actually happened week of Nov. 13
- Nov 6 - Dec 14 : Q-band commissioning -- 1 night/week, A-weather, dynamically scheduled. 3 nights max. Started Nov. 13
- Nov 13 - Dec 1 : Ka-band CCB continuum commissioning and Ka-band Zpectrometer testing -- Sharing four dynamically scheduled, daytime/evening sessions (~noon to ~midnight) for A/B weather. Zpectrometer will have up to ~ 25 hrs, CCB the remaining ~ 15 hrs.
- After Dec. 1 : Ka-band observations can commence, preference given to low-risk continuum projects.
- No later than week of Dec. 4 : Zpectrometer down, Ku-band up where Zpec was.
- Dec. 11 - Dec. 21 : PTCS OOF Tests -- A-weather, dynamically scheduled, 2 nights max.
- After Dec. 15 : Q-band observations can commence.
- C-band, Remove: week of Sep 4, Install: no later than week of November 7 Actually installed Nov. 15
- Penn Array, Install: week of Sep 11, Remove: no later than week of Oct 31 Actually removed Nov. 14
- Ka-band, Install: on or before the week of Oct 9
- Zpectrometer Install: week of Oct 23; Remove: no later than week of Dec 4
- Ku Remove: on or before week of Oct 23; Install: no later than week of Dec 4 Actually re-installed Dec. 14
- X-band moved to Ku-band slot: on or before week of Oct 23
- Q-band, Install: on or before the week of Oct 30
-- RonMaddalena - 14 Dec 2006
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Revision r1.6 - 15 Dec 2006 - 15:22 GMT - AmyShelton
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