| 24th of November 2020 |
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| ASKAP update for November |
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The ASKAP Update
for November is now available, and includes
a review of the year, a consolidation development update,
preparations for Pilot Surveys phase II, and
planning for the end of year period.
To keep the telescope operating with minimal intervention over the holidays,
full use will be made of recent automation enhancements.
It is proposed to obtain a mid-band pass of the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey,
with a centre frequency around 1296 MHz. RACS is a good test of extended,
automated survey operations since it consists of a large number of fields
covering the observable sky, with a relatively short integration time
(15 minutes was used in the low band) and relatively small disk space
requirements due to the use of online continuum averaging.
A recent RACS observing test trialled two possible survey tiling schemes and beam footprints (which need to have a smaller spacing than was used in the low band) and the automatic system configuration logic. To ensure the automatic configuration was triggered, the centre frequency was shifted by a small amount for a random 5% of the observations. The image above shows the location of each field observed and outlines fields where the frequency changed. Blocks that failed are crossed out. Although some blocks failed, these failures were due to real issues with the system that require addressing or can be improved with slight modifications to the logic. The automatic configuration system managed to recover a few less complicated faults on its own. (Image credit: Vanessa Moss) |