Re: Agenda for Monday meeting.

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

Hello Robert,

I got your mail asking for suggestions etc, but did not
expect to get to teleconf on monday, so no reply.

Short report on scheduling:

I have written a scheduling memo, but am still thinking about how to
accommodate the different observing cultures of the
university arrays, single dishes, and national facilities,
not to mention the non-radio astronomers who we want to
be able to use ALMA.

I think the answer is tied to having a very versatile
scripting language, which the observer can use to
control the system to a greater or lesser degree according
to his/her expertize and wishes.

Over the years, BIMA's basic interferometer observation,
has added various calibration cycles, mosaics, polarization
switching, source switching, frequency switching....It works,
and efficiently too, but
a table driven observation seems to be much more flexible.
The table could specify the "state" of the instrument for the
basic integration cycle. The state includes
source( name position velocity etc), polarization, frequency,
pointing position, integration time etc.
Table entries also specify the calibrations, as needed.

The observer can then control the instrument interactively
by requesting a particular state, or can build a script
which steps or loops thro' a table. The tables should be
ascii files which the user can build with more or less
help from friendly 'expert' programs which know how to
sequence observations.  Standard tables can be used for
many observations, rather like subroutines. The tables
can be read and edited, and archived as a record of the
observations. 

Dynamic scheduling is accommodated by allowing the system
to select some of the "state" parameters. E.g. instead of
specifying the source name for a phase calibrator,
"cal=phase RMS< 5deg", or some such thing, could specify
the observers' requirement for a phase calibrator, and
allow the system to select the best calibrator dynamically.
The user retains control of which parameters are set by the
system and which he/she controls directly. If the user is
working interactively, or by proxy, then a human observer
could search for the best calibrator, integration times etc,
and then use them. If the observation is running from a script
(remote observing in some people's terminology), then the
observations can still be optimized, or scheduled, dynamically
if desired.

I'm sorry, this runs on a bit and goes beyond scheduling into
the scripting language, but I'm afraid the world is connected.

It's not clear whether I should add these thoughts to the
scheduling memo.

I'll try to make to to the teleconf on monday anyway.

Thanks for your patience, if you get this far.

		Melvyn  
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 11:40:57 +0100 (MET)
To: lucas@iram.fr
From: Majordomo@web3.hq.eso.org
Subject: Majordomo file: list 'alma-sw-ssr' file 'alma-sw-ssr.991211'

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