Re: ALMA Science Software Requirements (SSR) -- Step 1

[mel wright 456 <wright@creek2.Berkeley.EDU>]

Hello Brian,

        I imagine that images would be created quasi-automatically with
software
with oversight and control by an operations staff.

The entire proposal, sheduling, observing, data reduction and imaging should
be
integrated.

. the proposal specifies scientific objectives with astronomical parameters
like
spectral lines, and/or frequencies, fields of view and coordinates, spectral
and
angular resolution.

. user friendly programs should be available to convert the astronomical
parameter space into instrumental parameter space, suggesting instrumental
trade-offs and alternatives, pointing centers (or OTF) mosaicing parameters,
and resulting sensitivities. If the user has an a-priori model distribution,
user friendly programs can simulate the observation and imaging process.

. the actual observing should be dynamically scheduled, unless there are
good reasons given by the user to justify particular UT, LST intervals
(e.g. planets, comets etc). The dynamic scheduling program does the
accounting
for LST ranges observed, observing time accrued etc. for each project.

. The user specifies images to be produced as real-time feedback, and as
delayed, possibly final, astronomical results.

. the user and the operations staff analyse these images and iterate with
further requests to the data reduction-imaging system for more images.

. imaging requests should be filtered by software to make sure they are
reasonable, some of this software should be friendly and available to the
user, so that he knows what the resulting sensitivity, spatial and spectral
parameter space he/she is imaging, and how much resources are being
requested
(and accounted for !)

                                Cheers, Melvyn