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On the 14th May 2020 at 08:58:55 UT, we finished observing the first
round of ASKAP Pilot Surveys. These surveys began officially on 15th
July 2019 at 10:08:44 UT, which means that the completion of Pilot
Surveys took 26,261,411 seconds (or around 304 days). It's been an
action-packed 304 days for everyone involved with the ASKAP project,
and reaching this point was a great chance to sit back and celebrate
in a small way how far we have come. The Pilot Surveys involved
observing ~100 hr for nine different ASKAP surveys: EMU, WALLABY,
POSSUM, DINGO, CRAFT, VAST, GASKAP, FLASH and LIGO. Throughout this
process, every aspect of observing with ASKAP was tested and refined
to maximise reliability in response to issues encountered, and we have
learnt many important lessons as a result. These lessons will
translate into how Pilot Surveys Phase II plays out, and how we carry
out an effective transition into full operations in 2021. To
unofficially celebrate the reaching of this milestone, I thought it
would be nice to have a mini online gathering of people from across
the project to all get together and watch the last seconds of the
final GASKAP Pilot Survey field. Luckily, ASKAP agreed to play along
and we all toasted to the end of Pilot Surveys at ~19:00 AEST on
Thursday 14th May. I'd like to say a huge thanks to everyone who was
able to join, it was great to have such a diverse cross-section of
ASKAP together and I really enjoyed seeing everyone together in one
telecon! I also want to thank specifically Aidan Hotan, Zoe Taylor,
Brett Hiscock, Adam Macleod, Aaron Chippendale, Matt Whiting and
Elaine Sadler who at short notice agreed to say a few words about
the end of the Pilot observations. And lastly, thank you to everyone
in the project who has contributed to get it to this stage for all
your hard work, especially over the last 304 days which were pretty
intense! I'm looking forward to the next phase of ASKAP surveys to
come, but also very much to the present shift in focus (and coming
improvements) as we give priority to development, testing, maintenance
and processing over the next few months of the consolidation period.
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