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Minutes of HEASARC Users Committee Meeting
March 23, 2001
The Agenda for the meeting is given below as Appendix 1.
0. Introductions
Present at the meeting were HUG members J. Grindlay (chair), N. Brandt,
D. Buote, D. Chakrabarty, M. Donahue, W. Heindl, K. Leighly, J. Osborne
and P. Slane. Reshmi Mukherjee was not able to attend the meeting; David
Buote and Karen Leighly were welcomed as new members.
Previous members
(Chryssa Kouveliotou, Jonathan McDowell, Ron Remillard and Alyn Tenant)
were thanked for their service.
Minutes from the previous meeting (2/25/00) were reviewed and accepted.
The Committee was pleased that most of the recommendations had
been implemented or at least considered.
In the manner introduced in the last Minutes, we provide very brief
summaries of the presentations and discussion of each Agenda item,
followed by any
---Questions asked by the Committee,
***Concerns, noted by the Committee, and
>>>Recommendations, for consideration by the HEASARC and NASA
1. HEASARC Overview (Nick White)
The HEASARC did well in the recent (June, 2000) Senior Review, being
among the top-rated data centers. Nevertheless, due to funding
pressures its FY01 budget ($1.42M) had remained flat, supporting
at least in part a staff of 7 scientists and 7 programmers. The Committee was
*** concerned that this constant funding, without inflation
increases, did not permit new initiatives but only
supported maintenance-level operations.
However, the AISR program was providing some new support (e.g. for
development of Skyview/Virtual Sky).
The (few) weaknesses noted by the Senior Review (multi-wavelength
database inter-connectivity not optimal; ARGUS interface could be
improved) were being dealt with.
Several questions, some with implied suggestions, were asked by
the Committee (or, in some cases, by their colleagues) from their
general use of HEASARC tools or databases:
---how is the balance set between development of archiving and
analysis tools; how are priorities set generally?
---could support for Linux users be provided?
---could presentations of data from different missions be made to
have more similar formats so that it was easier to inter-compare
mission data (e.g. Chandra vs. XMM; Chandra-HST joint observations)?
---could documentation for the group PHA function in XSPEC be improved
so users had better sense of how to make optimum binning of low
statistics data?
---can EPO activities be extended beyond K-12 to more completely
serve college audience?
On the general EPO issue, the Committee remains impressed by the
fine level of work and new initiatives being done at HEASARC. The fact
that small EPO projects, on individual grants, could not be pooled
for more effective combined efforts was of some concern to the Committee.
2. The Web walkthrough was deferred until later in the meeting due to
network problems.
3. The HEASARC interface with the Chandra archive was only discusssed
briefly since neither A. Rots or S. Murray were able to attend.
>>>The Committee would like to review this HEASARC-Chandra interface
more completely at its next meeting.
4. XMM GOF (Steve Snowden)
Despite full operations, only datasets for 3 GO observations had been
received as of the meeting time. Discussions were still ongoing as to
the future plans for being able to ingest, or mirror, XMM data into
a HEASARC archive. The Committee was pleased to hear that the GOF was
developing a new version of the Quick Sim (simulator tool) in time for
the upcoming AO2 (scheduled for Sept. 2001).
5. HETE-2 (Mike Corcorran)
HETE-2 data formats were still not defined (of concern to the committee)
although first data products had just become available (Feb. 2) for the
archive. Data product definitions, data verification procedures
and editing, and analysis tools were all still to be defined with MIT.
6. Archive Usage/Status (Steve Drake)
The HEASARC archive usage continues to grow at an impressive rate
(~2 Gb/day), with the largest influx still from RXTE. Total archive
size (Jan. 2001) was 2200 Gb. The RAID storage capacity was planned
to be increased to 3800Gb in April 2001, and projections for upcoming
new missions (INTEGRAL: 1000Gb/year) will further increase the system.
The INTEGRAL archive struture has been largely worked out. BROWSE
usage increased significantly over the past year. The Committee
was generally pleased with download speeds and access. The Committee
remains
***concerned that access to BeppoSAX/WFC data archive is still not available.
7. Software Development: Demos and Feedback
BROWSE (Tom McGlynn):
Bilateral links to both STScI/MAST and to CXT (Chandra) archives are
being developed and will allow access via HEASARC to these archives.
New planned features such as access to the CDS VizieR tables and
cross correlations with other results were mentioned. When these new tools
are available, the Committee
>>>recommends simple documentation, with examples, for how the user
can quickly use these features
>>>suggests that the HUG could be a beta-test site for new tools
as developed
>>>suggests that a clickable dynamic history-map (where user has BROWSED)
be added
The Committee recognizes the application of these new BROWSE capabilities
for future NVO use.
SKYVIEW (Tom McGlynn):
This continues to improve, with impressive new features (e.g. mosaics).
The Committee was interested that POSS-2 will be added soon?
SKYMORPH and ClassX (Tom McGlynn):
These new projects, supported by AISR grants, offer new capabilities:
access to the Near Earth Asteroid data (SkyMorph), which can allow more
general temporal variation analysis, and a generalized x-ray source
classifier (ClassX). Both are ambitious, and the Committee looks forward
to learning more (particularly about ClassX) as they are developed.
FTOOLS update (Bill Pence):
The Committee was interested to learn more about the new (v3.0) Fv
release which allows direct interface to SkyView with interactive
features not available from the Skyview website. The Committee noted
that the flux (and centroid) extraction would be enhanced if there were
provision to subtract local background(s) û either from a
surrounding concentric annulus or separate circular or square region
on the image.
HERA (Bill Pence):
This new AISR grant-supported effort looks to be exciting, allowing
web-based analysis tools to operate directly on archival data. This
may be most useful for expanding the user community to non-expert
astronomers (non-HEA) or to EPO users. However the Committee noted
it may also be very effective for doing batch mode or script-driven
analysis of large datasets for survey science.
XSPEC (Keith Arnaud):
The user community continues to be indebted to Keith for continuing
the development of this widely used package. The new features (e.g.
new absorption models; low-N statistics tools soon to be released) are
anticipated. The spectral line fitting and identification package and
general grating analysis should be compared with Ciao tools being
similarly developed.
8. Additional general comments:
The Committee notes that it would be generally desirable to
---make OGIP standards and documentation easier to find
---enable users to more easily integrate Ciao tools and Ftools; and
XMM tools?
---improve and simplify documentation; add more cookbook examples
8. New HUG members?
The Committee discussed possible new members to replace those who might
be rotating off the HUG. These included Bob Rutledge, Rita Sambruna and
Jimmy Irwin.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:45pm.
Appendix 1: Agenda for HUG Meeting, March 23, 2001
9.00 Introductions
9.15 HEASARC and Data Archives Overview (including future HEASARC milestones
and a discussion about the impact of the NVO initiative)- Nick White
10.15 A Walk Through the HEASARC Web - Karen Smale and Steve Drake
10.45 Coffee break
11:00 HEASARC Interface with Chandra Archive - Arnold Rots or Steve Murray
11:15 XMM-Newton Archive and GOF - Steve Snowden
11:30 HETE-II Archive - Mike Corcoran
11:40 Archive Usage for Past & Present Missions, Browse Usage Statistics,
Database Creation Activities and 2001-2 Projections - Steve Drake
12.00 Lunch
13.00 Software Activities at the HEASARC
a) Browse: Current state and capabilities (inc. Chandra data access via
HEASARC Browse) and future plans (e.g., Incorporation Of Vizier tables
into Browse) - Tom McGlynn
b) SkyView - Tom McGlynn
c) Ftools update & HERA (new Web-based analysis capability)
- Bill Pence & Christina Heikkila
d) Xspec Update (inc. support for XMM-Newton & Integral) - Keith Arnaud
14:00 Breakout session for demos, e.g., on new BROWSE interfaces, and small
group discussions on issues that have been raised
15.00 Coffee Break
15.15 Executive session of HUG
16.00 Feedback to HEASARC from HUG
16.30 New members proposed to replace exiting HUG members
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