----------------------------------- UKON Users Group: ESO Users Telecon 12th April 2016 15:00-16:00 ----------------------------------- Agenda - ESO UC (SS) - Comments on UC39 Recommendations - Report on UK Feedback to ESO Users Poll - Phase I issues - Phase 2 issues - Software - OPC feedback - AOB - Next full UKON meeting (AV) ----------------------------------- Dial-in info Telephone number: 01865282982 Participants PIN: 372242 For help, please contact Telecommunications by email: telecommunications@oucs.ox.ac.uk or phone: 88888 ----------------------------------- MINUTES In attendance: Jacco van Loon Graham Smith Alfonso Aragon-Salamanca Stefan Bagnulo Chris Evans Richard McMahon Pat Roche Alastair Edge Mark Swinbank Andy Bunker Stephen Smartt Rubina Kotak Philip Lucas Sarah Casewell Apologies: Dave Clements, Chris Collins, Timothy Gledhill, Chris Watson, Chris Conselice, Nial Tanvir, Ray Sharples, Dave Clements, Gerry Gilomore, Simon Morris, Paul O'Brien -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ESO UC discussion - Stephen Smartt -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OPC membership & Time allocation working group ---------------------------------------------- Last year each UC reps were requested to nominate candidates for OPC membership. These names comprise a list of those prepared to serve, and ESO will make up membership based on the usual balance of science expertise. SS with STFC put out a UK call for nominations and self-nominations last August for (self-)nominations, with ~ 30 replies. The number of women responders was low. The proposed named were well received by ESO (both in number and breadth). The call will be run once a year towards the end of August/September. The OPC structure is currently being reviewed by the a Time Allocation Working Group. The members are Damien Ségransan as UC rep., Almudena Alonso-Herrero (STC rep.), Antonio Chrysostomou (ALMA rep.), Nando Patat (head of OPO) and reps from Gemini, Keck, and ESA. The membership and ToRs were determined at the end of last year, and take a broad look the OPC and the process for time allocation. The composition and ToR includes looking at ways to decrease response times between proposal submission and acceptance, exploring joint proposals, VLT use in the ELT era etc. They have been asked to meet annually with monthly telecons and are expected to produce a final report. SS expects that the UC will provide input to that at the meeting next week. AV: queried if the ToRs/membership are publicly available, SS may only have been distributed to the UC. AV: when are they due to report SS no date for delivery if the final report. Users poll ---------- 60 responses from the UK, largest from any of the member states. Note error in 2nd bullet: Top 5 instruments are XShooter, ALMA, FORS, SINFONI, MUSE Main issue (taken from SS Feedback summary): If I had to pick up on one single thing that was articulated by UK users, and the one major area that ESO should invest time and resources in to improve science productivity and user experience - it would be data products and data reduction pipelines. This has been a topic of lengthy discussion at UC meetings, but it appears to be THE highest priority now to address. This issue was discussed at the last UC, and similar comments have been reported across all member states. Phase 1 ------- A new phase 1 tool, is being developed. The UC focus is to get all of the important phase 1 issues already identified prioritised for being addressed in the new tool (rather than quick fixed for the current system now). This will be a web-based tool and expect this to be reported on next week. From the last UC minutes, they wee expecting a version to have already been rolled out at the end of 2015, update at next week's UC. UG Comments RGM: Highlighted the importance that proper user testing needs to happen otherwise there is risk for a larger list of problems and roll out someting that's worse than what we currently have. SS will raise this at the UC. PFR commented that the tool should retain Latex capability given its popularity - SS confirmed this was the case. JvL: Capability to include comments on previous proposals and feedback should be there AAS: Capability to import previous proposal, with at least technical information should be populated automatically. SS this has been passed in a long, prioritised list of phase 1 amendments (also includes resubmit a new version before the deadline (i.e. replace rather than current esubmit and then withdraw previous versions)) AV: Adequate space for multi-instrument technical justification should be provided. ALMA Phase 2 ------------ UC Poll comments summary: - time scales being very compressed for phase 2. - lots of parameters and difficult to complete. - support from ARCs is good, face-to-face visits seem more efficient than the ticket process that seems to take time. The experience of UKON members varied JvL stated that the phase 2 is not very intuitive, and may be daunting for new users. He benefited from an expert on the team and othes would likely need help from ARC. MS and SC did not have any issues. MS added that the phase 2 is pre-filled by the ALMA team based on phase 1 information and it's relatively quick to verify and approve. All agreed that the ARC and general ALMA support are good. Data issues Other issues raised was the long delay between observations and delivery. PFR stated that this issue was raised at the ALMA board last week and more guidelines for the expected delay should be made clearly to manage people's expectations. MS raised that a larger issue is that it can take 10-15 weeks for the dat to pass through QA. If it fails it gets put back in the queue but the risk is that the array has changed configuration by that point and may not return to that configuration before the end of the cycle. PFR commented that this was discussed at the board meeting and a plan to make the data available to PIs when they want it. This should allow for earlier evaluation and help to alleviate such problems. LaSilla/Paranal Phase 2 ----------------------- UC report: - P2PP does it's job, lots of minor complaints. - concerns about the information loop between the PI, USD, night astronomer, and detrimental decisions being made - A new designated visitor mode (DVM) has been offered in the lastest call for the PIs to remotely sit in on the observation to aid the information flow - this is only provided for runs with <1n - result of successful remote engineering runs carried out at Garching, could aid short programmes preferring/requiring visitor status - has alleviated issues for <1n proposals the the current and previous semesters that had to be switched from visitor to service mode - it will not be offered for normal queue/service observing programmes SC had a 2x0.5n run carried out in DVM and it worked very well, Skype chat with the TO the night before, and then during the night. There was not expectation for her to be available all the time, but she was in her case. If the astronomer is not online then Skype instant messages would be sent to update the PI on the status. MS & CE queried if the DVM could be applied to GT runs when partial nights sometimes separated by several days can be awarded. When delivered instruments are running stably there isn't much call for GT teams to be on site and costs for staffing such short runs are increasingly more challenging with limited funds. SS will raise this at the UC but also recommends that GT teams request this when runs that are short and difficult to staff/fund are scheduled. Data issues ----------- UC Poll: - pipeline products not publication quality data - poor documentation - tricky installation - difficult to run Main issue at last UC and many specific recommendations were made (see UC39 minutes). including cookbooks video tutorials and pipelines. Expect progress reports on these issues at UC40. FAQs per instrument have been generated as a result of UC39 recommendations but nothing else seems to have appeared. JvL queried if the pipelines can be run at ESO and appear in the archive directly, at least for quicklook purposes. There was general support for this amongst UKON. SS stated the XShooter and UVES data are automatically processed but others were not (RK clarified XShooter IFU is excluded from this). UKON supported that at least imaging data (astrometrically calibrated) quick look products could be easily included - SS will take this forward. Appreciate that improving data products and pipelines may not be high priority for ESO (it is seen as open ended project) given limitations on their time but strong support for community interaction on this. AV suggested wikis or a call to the community for core teams to be setup to help the instrument scientists with these aspect, SS reported that this was the basis of his suggestion to request community help in return for reduced data to the participants. ESO have generally found that wikis are not used and lose momentum. This will be discussed again at UC40. UC AOB ------ JvL enquired about the view of large programmes at ESO, that tend to put a lot of pressure at Paranal and La Silla. SS reported that ESO like LPS and encourage them, the time allocation working group's remit includes looking into facilitating larger programmes for a small number of groups. JvL warned of allocating significant time to a small number of groups and that an overall balance between large and small programmes should be maintained. RK queried the completion of b-ranked programmes. SS The UC39 minutes suggest that only 45% of b-ranked observations were executed, but ESO stated that this meant 45% of completed runs and the number of OBs executed is higher. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Next full UKON meeting - Aprajita Verma -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next meeting will be face-to-face, with remote participation possible, and will be scheduled shortly. It will comprise of status reports from STFC and optical/NIR facilities and instruments with UK involvement. The main topic of discussion will be UKON's future role, in particular whether to solely align it to ESO given our investment as our prime optical/NIR facility, and loss of other facilities that used to fall under UKON's remit. AV will circulate background documentation and proposals of changes to the remit, structure and chair etc. to the UKON user group ahead of this meeting. These will be discussed and voted on in the meeting. Any comments in the meantime should be sent to her directly (aprajitaverma1@gmail.com).