Update on Discovery WG Activities

John Swinbank
LOFAR Transients Key Project Meeting, Meudon, December 2011

Transcript

1. DISCOVERY WG John Swinbank swinbank@transientskp.org
2. WHAT DO WE DO? Testing & commissioning LOFAR imaging. Development of the “transients pipeline”. Planning next generation LOFAR development. Other contributions to the overall LOFAR system.
3. GOAL: MSSS 6 months of observing & data processing. 2×3616 HBA observations; 9×660 LBA. We will search all of this data for transients.
4. GOAL: RADIO SKY MONITOR Tile out a large fraction of the sky. Image on timescale of one to thousands of seconds. Detect & respond to transients in real-time. Pubic alerts & mineable lightcurve archive.
5. LOFAR IMAGING
6. LOFAR IMAGING See talk by Alexander for results. In brief: it’s possible to make nice images, but it’s awkward and takes a lot of effort. Three goals: Publications. Understand how best to use the current system to identify transients today. Plan for the next generation system.
7. GPU Cluster Imaging BlueGene/P Flagging and Compression Correlation CEP Cluster Transients Pipeline Calibration LOFAR Stations FUTURE... Flagging on BlueGene? Streaming data processing? How long is a calibration solution good for? GPU Imaging? BlueGene successor? ...?
8. TRANSIENTS PIPELINE MonetDB Database Imaging Pipeline Image Cube Source Finding Lightcurve Storage Transient & Variability Analysis Source Association Archive Database Classification & Analysis Response Scheduling Send External Alert Re-run Image Analysis Schedule New Observation Other Facilities Receive External Alert Real-time Processing Off-line & External Systems On-line Processing Visibility Data Scheduler Talks by Evert & Bart coming up.
9. STILL TO COME Upgrades to our pipeline: Automatic classification Data mining “Smart” transients detection Upgrades to LOFAR: Responding to triggers Automatic scheduling
10. TRIGGERING & VOEVENTS VOEvent is an XML-based standard for describing “transients celestial events”. Developed by the IVOA. We are standardising on this for sending & receiving notification of targets of opportunity wherever possible. We’ve discussed our experiments with LIGO at previous meetings—paper now submitted. See talk by Tim tomorrow for latest VOEvent news.
11. OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS Pipeline framework Global/Local Sky Model database Sourcefinder Participation in general commissioning ...
12. WG MEMBERS Michael Wise John Swinbank Richard Armstrong Martin Bell Jess Broderick Dario Carbone Yvette Cendes Casey Law James Miller-Jones Gosia Pietka Peeyush Prasad Thijs van Putten Evert Rol Antonia Rowlinson Anna Scaife Bart Scheers Tim Staley Valeriu Tudose & thanks to others!
13. FINALLY Your Discovery WG needs you!