Minutes for Telecon for Sep 25, 2002

Present: Churchwell, Benjamin, Meade, Indebetouw, Dickey,
Babler, Clemens, Mathis, Whitney, Wolfire, Watson, Marston,
Stolovy, Cohen

Next telecon: *Wednesday* Oct 09, 2002, 11 am CDT, 608-265-1000 #4112


Mosaicer      Barb

  Barb has been looking at the SSC mosaicer and Montage. The advantage of Montage
  is that it does galactic projection and SSC's mosaicer does not.
  Barb sent sample data to the Montage folks...it wasn't doing bkg matching
  for the galactic projection. (It turned out it was from NaNs not properly
  assigned). The SSC mosaicer does not have bkg matching in yet.  A new version will
  be out soon but it won't have bkg matching.
  A planar fit to the sky is done for bkg matching.  Hopefully it is
  not a big issue for IRAC.  At what level does it become important
  to us?  We may not want bkg matching because you lose photometric accuracy
  on the sky.  Mosaicing is not in the pipeline yet.

Bandmerger      Remy

  There has been lots of progress on bandmerging.
  Remy sent out a summary of the steps involved in the bandmerge process.
  We've written about 15 different programs which do among other things,
  formatting and keeping track of the information. We hope to have the
  programs debugged by the end of the month.   We have the bandmerger
  running on linux.

Simulations for Oct telecon    Remy & Brian

  We may need to re-run the AORs with the dark subtracted.

New noise source tests         Brian

  Ed talked to Fazio.  The noise spikes affects 10-15% of the pixels. We would like
  to get some data and run it through our PSE (DAOPHOT) to analyze the possible effects
  on us.  The effect is largest for the shortest exposures. Our Fowler number
  is 4, FT=2 sec.  Brian has some 2 sec data which was co-added into our 
  W51 data for all 4 bands.  Brian is using the same algorithms as before.
  He just got the images so there has been limited work on it. Early results
  show an increase of false detections at S/N = 3-4.  About twice as many
  false detections at S/N=3.  Fazio thinks they can fix the problem.

Catalog & Database              Team
 Flags-weights for flags for reliability of each entry?
    a quality flag for each source?
    simply flags?

  We have a source quality flag which keeps track of bad pixels, artifacts
  in the data.  We can throw out a detection of a source depending on
  the flag, but when?  before or after bandmerging?
  Cosmic rays will be masked before DAOPHOT.
  Remy thinks we keep them through the bandmerger and either discard
  later and/or increase errors.  How to increase the errors? We learn as
  we go.  If there are bad pixels at the core, DAOPHOT won't find a source.
  If there are bad pixels in the wing, it's not as much of an impact.
  What do we want in the final database?  # detections + SQF for each
  detection or final SQF for each band?
  Remy will send out a summary of flags and questions.

Calibrators for Longitudes > 50 degrees    Martin, Remy

  Checking 55 deg - 70 deg (this is the first segment we observe): K, M giants
  About 3000 objects in this region, using SIMBAD & MSX
  About 750 objects are stars. If drop stars in clusters & associations,
   then about 70 stars. Expect 10's to hundreds in this area.
  What will be acceptable to us is TBD. Would be good to have 1 calibrator per
  segment. We want to have lots so we can cull.  (Martin found 126 stars for the 
  ecliptic pole of which 84 were acceptable.)
  Martin will look at the W51 region.  Bob sent him the WIYN data.  May
  need fainter objects in that region.  Michigan types are the best. But if
  we need fainter stars, WIYN may be useful.

Budget
 
  Bicay will send out revised budgets in the next couple of days for the next
  3.5 years.

Document Status                 John M & Barb

  Science & Data Requirements
   John sent out a new version last week.  Please send him comments.
   A figure is to be supplied by Remy.

  Data Products Doc
   Ed & John M made some modifications...will send out a new version soon.

Misc

  We'd like the latest version of what is in the pmask and dmask images.
  Version 6.2 SSC products will be released on Monday Sept 30.  

  Susan: point of interest for us.  The Galactic part of the First Look
   Survey will be IRAC & MIPS b=0 to 10, l=67.5, one deg long, 10 deg wide.
   and b=0 to -10, l=272 deg.  35 hrs. Data is public right away. But we 
   might not get it before our verification.
   There will be a web site for this soon.
    (http://sirtf.caltech.edu/SSC/fls/galac/)

  The M16 ERO has moved forward and still in the pool to be observed.