2022-03-10

Owned by Samuel James McSweeney
Mar 12, 2022
2 min read

Present:

  • Ramesh Bhat
  • Sam McSweeney
  • Garvit Grover
  • Gayatri Aniruddha
  • Marcin Sokolowski
  • Mengyao Xue
  • Ryan Shannon
  • Shi Dai
  • Ian Morrison

Minutes:

Introducing Garvit:

  • Intro to Garvit’s PhD project
    • Will be taking over from Nick
  • Nick no longer attending

General update (Ramesh)

  • No new observations taken
  • Changes to MWA observing semesters (2022A/2022B)
    • Lightning damage – down to 80 working tiles
    • 2022A pushed back to 2022-05-01
    • 2022A proposals include observations for timing PSR #3 and continuing MWAX commissioning (see below)
    • 2022B slated for September/October, but still might get delayed further
  • Progress of SMART TBD
    • Possibility of compressed campaign in October (fingers crossed), but only a small subset of orange observations
  • Science commissioning for 2022A
    • Extended goals, including
      • Picket fence mode
    • Amended target list to suit LST range (and commissioning goals, of course)
  • Plans and priorities
    • Existing papers → publish
    • Push forward on pulsar hunting (with SMART webapp) and finish first-pass processing
    • Advance MWAX commissioning
    • Plan 2nd pass processing
    • Follow up (timing, polarimetry, etc.) of PSR #3
  • Steven Tremblay may be making a comeback (based at NRAO)

SMART webapp demo (not live) (Sammy)

  • Sammy explained the SMART Web App demonstration!
  • Server - was down during the presentation.
  • Demo - was through screenshots.
    • Back-end : Postgres database 
    • Front-en : Django  
      • Authentication features as well
    • Possible to outsource the search for other people to login and test the candidates 
  • Nearing completion Beta Version  - testing session on Monday - Beta Version 
  • Manual Uploading of candidates - that is not automated yet! 
  • Features :
    • Data-Central - host 
    • Built in features :
      • Clustering/Cone Search : Cross correlating the meta information of the candidates across different beams! 
      • Optimized for finding good candidates faster!
        • Show Similar Known Pulsars and Similar Candidates 
        • Brings the good ones - clustered to the top of the list! 
        • Add notes - Apply rating/notes to every repeating candidates 

Discussion

  • SD:
    • How many people rank a candidate
  • SM:
    • Everyone would be able to rank the candidates 
    • Everyone’s average score would be updated accordingly - follow this list 
  • RB:
    • More than 3-4 people rank every candidate
    • Encourage students for ranking to improve and encourage their learning and understanding 
  • SM:
    • Looking to put Applications to scale up 
    • Deploy this product in High Schools! 
  • RB:
    • Deploy and outreach in High Schools 
    • In conversations with Data Central Team to keep this in mind to accommodate this deployment within a reasonable budget with the necessary training 
  • SM:
    • Need to submit an EoI by next month 
  • SD:
    • New PhD Student to help join in for the Pulsar Hunting session! 
  • RB:
    • Monday Evenings 6 pm : Pulsar Hunting!
    • Incentive : “Student’s Pulsar” 
    • Sammy to organize this training and testing session 

Sammy - Paper’s Update 

  • J0026-1956 Paper 
  • Working out of Overlead, working through the local repository 
  • Referee Comments: 
    • 20 minutes of “Null”
    • Manual Single Pulse Search performed 
    • Help Needed :
      • What is pdmp doing? 
    • Working on Nulling Histograms 
  • Two “non-detections” processed, found some faint single pulses

Discussion


  • RB: Max(SNR)
  • RB: We know exactly where the sub-pulse is. Does it make sense to add one more curve to the plot - where Pulse Energy is based on the sub-pulse? May/May not be obvious to people! So, that distribution plots are informative for a large number of people! Referee is not asking for details though!

Ramesh’s Paper Update

  • Survey description paper
  • Using Trello for project-managing
  • Includes
    • detections of known pulsars (gallery!)
    • figures to demonstrate tiling strategy
    • Plot to compare measured vs predicted flux density (Nick’s work)
  • To-do:
    • Several sections to be drafted, and accompanying plots to be made
      • Flux density analysis
      • Subsections on PSR #2 and #3
      • Survey simulations
      • …
    • Just need a block of time to sit down and write!