Minutes of telecon of May 8, 2001 (1100 CDT)

Next telecon: May 19, 1100 CDT; 608-265-1000 #4112

JUNE MEETING: 	information not given at the telecon!
Meeting is June 28/29, 2001. ARRIVE EVENING OF JUNE 27 (WEDNESDAY);
LEAVE PM OF FRIDAY, JUNE 29. Of course, agenda will be distributed
ahead of time.


Present: Babler, Bania, Benjamin, Clemens, Churchwell, Hoffman,
Kobulnicky, Mathis, Meade, Watson, Whitney, Wolfire

I. Whitney: Progress on Pipeline (Whitney, Meade, Babler, Wolff): (1)
Babler has been automating DAOPHOT. There are minor problems with
integrating the stand alone version into IRAF. He has been using HST
images for the tests. Things look good overall. (2) Wolff is working
on getting fields into and out of the database, plus extracting fields
form the headers. (3) Meade, Whitney have generated test data using
Stolovy's PSF (which is, of course, somewhat theoretical). It does not
have nice Gaussian shapes.

There were general feelings that the team has made excellent progress!
The future will involve trying to integrate the FITS files header
information (SSC has not decided on its exact form) and meshing the
teams' entire range of activities into a coherent whole. Babler will
start reading and digesting the documentation from OPUS. Wolff will
be in Madison next week for discussion.

II.  Churchwell: Assistant Scientist position: we have had 8
applications so far, with the deadline May 15. Specific individuals
were listed. Churchwell appointed a subcommittee (Kobulnicky, Mathis,
Whitney, and himself) to review the applications. Clemens strongly
recommended that a telephone or face-to-face interview be conducted
with similar questions for each candidate, even if the candidate had
already been in Madison. According to BU's experience, the types of
responses of various candidates are very revealing.

III. Kobulnicky: our response if the 3-min. overhead per AOR is
charged (over our objections: see below): Chip and Ed had sent a
letter to SSC stating our case with an example. It is available on our
Web page. With the simple example shown on the Web, the overhead would
account for 33% of the time. If the 3 min. tax were relaxed to once
per session, it would be only 3%. Clemens will raise this issue when
he visits SSC on the Users Cte. (NOTE: Marsden sent a group email
after the telecon saying that SSC will very likely insist on keeping
the 3-min.  tax on each AOR.)

IV. Churchwell: Agenda for June meeting:

a. We will be very interested in how the pipeline is coming:
the interactions between OPUS, the simulated databases, mosiacking,
inclusion of material in the headers, and the like. 

b. We will try to identify 10 or 12 (?) key science issues that the
data will likely impact. The teams and lead authors will be
discussed.  The background material can be in hand before the GLIMPSE
data are available, so that we can take very early data and have
papers written very soon. We should probably discuss what to do about
new and unexpected results (order of authors, etc.), although we do
not anticipate undue problems of priority within our team.

c. Budgets for the 3 years should be discussed.

V. Other issues

a. Clemens: What should we do about the degradation of the long
low-wavelength filter of the Infrared Spectrometer? (He is on the
Users Panel and will be asked his opinion on the subject). There has
been a slow degradation in the lab, and potential users are very
unhappy. It is possible that NASA Hdqrs. will require that the dewar
be opened and the filter replaced. The impact of this would be MAJOR:
about a year's delay of launch, plus possible risk to the other
instruments. Churchwell has already sent a letter to SSC saying that
the loss of the IRC would not impact our science. The team discussed
the implications, with a strong feeling against the replacement.
Collectively we feel that there is no question at all if the
degradation has not changed since March (that is, if the filter is
stable at present, but with a transmission about 30% lower than the
original.) 

Churchwell suggested that launch should delayed only if there is an
augmentation to the SSC budget to compensate for the costs of people
hired with the original schedule in mind. A year's delay would have a
huge impact on the hiring of the postdoc position, since he/she should
be heavily involved in producing science with GLIMPSE data as well as
with programmactic duties.

b. Clemens: what about the details of the June meeting? (Needed for
ordering tickets, etc.) See beginning of this message.

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