Altri ARC
Early Science cycle 0 phase 1 - july 2011
Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 11:57:43 +0100 (BST)
From: Anita M. S. Richards <a.m.s.richards@manchester.ac.uk>
To: arcnodesreps@eso.org
Subject: [Arcnodesreps] Cycle 0 feedback
Here is a quick summary of the Manchester experiences (may be further
comments).
Many many thanks to those at ESO who responded so rapidly and helpfully to the queries we pushed at them.
We received inquiries from tens of people (often multiple inquiries) by phone, email and twitter, to the UK ARC contact 'addresses'. Many elected to have an ARC collaborator although told that it was not compulsory. People were often quite reluctant to raise helpdesk tickets, either due to diffidence or lack of time, in a number of cases we raised helpdesk tickets where we could not find an answer documented accessibly.
Most of the questions were quite complicated technical points. Only one or two people had trouble getting the basics to work, and they were people who had only come to ALMA and the OT in the last few weeks, days or in one case hours. The only confusing thing was that sometimes the chosen bands/lines were slightly misaligned with the shaded allowed region in the visual spectral display, perhaps there should be a warning that the visualiser is only a guide and pixelisation etc. may cause shifts; the tabular set-up should be used as definative since it will give you an error if your bands protrude outside the allowed range.
There were some relatively simple questions about why can't I put all my lines in one sideband, etc. and people who had previously registered as testers or on one of the ESO proposal planning wikis not realising they also had to register at the portal.
The commonest more complicated questions were about how to fit lines into the allowed sidebands by giving adjusted frequencies for sub-bands (e.g. the 321 and 325 GHz water lines). Other questions concerned mosaicing set-up, frequency shifting, whether to put multiple sources into one or multiple Science Goals, and other observing strategies. All of these involved knowing about the specific project, the users had generally 'done their homework' in terms of checking feasibility with the Sensitivity Calculator etc.
We reported a few bugs, notably the erratic absence of some common lines from the spectral selector, and a forbidden sideband combination which did not trigger an error message.
Potential improvements:
Should make it even more prominent that users should use the Sensitivity Calculator not simulations for noise levels - BUT should use simulations for potential dynamic range limitations or missing spacing problems.
Make it easier to figure out how to squeeze lines in against the edges of sidebands (trade-off with channel width etc.) or fill up with continuum.
There was some confusion about how to pick the representative frequency and bandwidth for Control and Performance and get apparently sensible calibration time estimates, when observing line and continuum or lines in parts of a band with different atmospheric sensitivities.
However, a lot of useful information will probably come from the technical assessment panels, there should be some way for them to feed back suggestions for how the tools could, practically, make life easier for the proposals they look at...
Best wishes Anita