Present:

• Ramesh Bhat
• Sammy McSweeney
• Nick Swainston
• Susmita Sett
• Ryan Shannon
• Mengyao Xue
• Marcin Sokolowski
• Gayatri Aniruddha
• Ian Morrison

Agenda:

1. General updates and plans (Ramesh) 
2. VCSbeam and documentation (Sammy) 
3. Processing and database updates (Nick)
4. Papers and progress (Sammy/Ramesh) 
5. Database of pulsar detections (Nick, all)

Minutes:

• Ramesh’s update:
• No change in sky coverage plot
• MWA configuration change:
• Change (to extended configuration) was planned for early March (as of recent emails)
• However, due to various circumstances, configuration change will be starting imminently
• Will have to wait for details before we can make solid plans for remaining SMART observations
• However, new system has smaller turnaround time for data throughput, so more observations can be packed into a smaller number of days (which may be crucial for strategising the remaining observations).
• Search sensitivity
• Plot shown (intended for SMART survey description paper, Bhat et al in prep) showing sensitivity as a function of DM.
• Tsys is worse by factor of ~2 in Galactic plane compared to elsewhere.
• Scattering can significantly reduce sensitivity
• SMART still 3-5 times more sensitive than 70-cm survey (for long period pulsars)
• Smearing time. Turns out that DM steps used for shallow pass are big enough to dominate smearing time. This will have to inform deep shallow.
• Referee report received for McSweeney et al. (submitted) last week.
• (Sam will report more later in the meeting)
• PSR #3
• Current position good to ~1-2 arcminutes
• Not seen in TGSS and 70cm
• Sensitive down to 4mJy
• Same frequency as SMART
• Indicative S_150 ~ 10-15 mJy, spectral index < -1.8
• Cycle 42 GMRT proposal due in 48 hours
• Positive response for ASTAC (2022A) proposal
• Personnel:
• Nick switching to part time – he got a job at CIC! (Congrats!)
• Garvit will be starting >= March
• Brad Meyers coming back in Sem 2
• Discussion:
• RS: Any re-observations (or archival obs) of PSR #3?
• NS: No, it’s in a historically less frequently sampled field.
• Sammy’s update:
• MWAX commissioning data progress reported here:
• https://wiki.mwatelescope.org/pages/viewpage.action?spaceKey=MP&title=MWAX+VCS+Commissioning
• New VCSBeam documentation (still a work in progress) published here:
• https://github.com/CIRA-Pulsars-and-Transients-Group/vcsbeam
• MWAX concern:
• Some structure seen in frequency hints at potential problems
• Currently with MWAX data, edge channels are ALWAYS flagged
• Nick’s update:
• At 39/51 first pass shallow search processing complete
• Database webapp has lots of nice new features, but current set of bugs means nothing that can be shown at today’s meeting (stay tuned!)
• SM: How many of the 39 (out of 51) have been ranked?
• NS: Not many. Maybe ~6 (by humans), but ~30 (by ML)
• Sammy’s 2nd update:
• Second paper referee report arrived
• Generally positive, can probably turn around revision in a few weeks (depending on Sammy’s time management!)
• Ramesh’s survey paper update:
• >⅓ of paper has draft text
• Quick overview of some figures in various stages of completion
• Not yet ripe enough to share Overleaf more broadly, but is coming along
• Discussion on what data products can be made available to public – more discussion later
• Ways to improve Table 1 (Known pulsars detected in SMART survey)
• Include offsets from true positions
• Include some spectral index info