Science Tools Working Group
Our last meeting was February 13. Owing to travel and Ops Sim 2 and the Collaboration meeting, we will not meet again until mid March.
The current version of the Science Tools is v9r4p2. This is the version that the Glast Users Group will use for the Beta Test next month. The most important changes from v9r4p1 are bug fixes to gtsrcmaps and gtltcube. Here are all of the differences from v9r4p1.
Updated Pass 5 IRFs (corresponding to the data being processed for Ops Sim 2) are now available in Science Tools versions LATEST1.2248 and later (i.e., not yet in a release). Riccardo and Luigi generated the FITS files and Jim inserted them into CALDB. They are P5_v13_0_diff (and _source and _trans). See Jim's note.
Jim and Toby will lead a splinter session at the collaboration meeting on 'Extending Science Tools', for people with ideas and motivation (and skill) who would like to add new tools or new functionality to the Science Tools. The session is currently scheduled during the long lunch break on Wednesday, March 12.
Data products: No news.
Databases and related utilities
No news
Likelihood analysis
From Jim:
- bug-fix for gtsrcmaps in reading in scData files (v13r11p5)
- bug-fix for PowerLawSuperExpCutoff (submitted by Damien Parent, v13r11p4)
- made Gaussian quadrature integration of diffuse responses the default (v13r12)
GRB tools
No news.
Pulsar tools
Masa and James are continuing to work on implementing handling of ephemeris handling for alternate sets of timing parameters for binary pulsars.
Observation simulation
Jim fixed a bug in the FileSpectrum source (that also affects FileSpectrumMap and RadialSource) regarding how the energies of generated photons are assigned. The bug had gone unnoticed since v7 of the Science Tools; the effect was fairly unsubtle but these sources have not been widely used in the sky models.
User interface and infrastructure (& utilities)
No development news
For the Beta Test the GLAST Users Group members will be working from their home institutions, i.e., without direct hand holding from the GSSC. As reported last week, Analia Cillis at the GSSC has updated and extended the reference pages for the Science Tools. These will be made available in the User Workbook. She is also working on updating the tutorials.
Source Catalog
Met last week. Ludovic reported on improving the sensitivity of MR_filter for source detection. Jean reported further results on catalog analysis of time intervals containing pointed observations using the 55-day LEO data set and on the effects of bright, non-power-law sources on results for their surroundings. The former is an example of a strategy for analysis when the residual background cannot be considered negligible. Tyrel gave an update on his work to study the use of covariance information from Recon for improving the accuracy of source position assignments.
Science Tools Working Group
Our last meeting was February 13 (attendees J Chiang, S Digel, J Ballet, C Patterson, D Band, A Cillis, D Davis, E Winter, T Burnett, W Focke, N Giglietto, T Porter). We may not meet again until after the collaboration meeting.
The current version of the Science Tools remains v9r4p1.
Data products: No news. David expects to be able to submit 'Rev A' of the File Formats Document before launch. This would incorporate various fixes (e.g., Andrea T. noticed that the current definition of LS-005 specifies a maximum altitude of 10,000 m for GLAST) and refinements.
Databases and related utilities
No news
Likelihood analysis
Jim fixed a bug in gtltcube that prevented it from correctly ingesting more than one spacecraft data file.
GRB tools
No LAT development news. David described discussions with Rob Preece about the GSSC providing an Web service for generating GBM response matrices. The GBM data will be released with response matrices but the service will allow updated matrices to be generated, e.g., if a better position is found for the burst.
Pulsar tools
Masa reports that he and James are continuing to work on implementing handling of ephemeris handling for alternate sets of timing parameters for binary pulsars.
Regarding populating D4, right now it looks like David Smith et al. at Bordeaux will be aggregating inputs from radio pulsar and X-ray pulsar timers into the ephemeris database file that the pulsar tools use and the GSSC will distribute. Not all of the details are worked out regarding making the ephemerides publicly available but pulsar group members are optimistic that something can be worked out. See Timing Database for GLAST LAT Pulsars.
Observation simulation
No news.
User interface and infrastructure (& utilities)
No development news
Dave Davis and Analia have sent Chuck the updated and extended reference pages (equivalent to FTOOLS fhelp pages) for the Science Tools. These will make their way into the User Workbook, replacing the current reference pages.
Source Catalog
Did not meet last week.
Science Tools Working Group
Our last meeting was January 16. We probably will meet this week on Wednesday (tomorrow).
The current version of the Science Tools remains v9r4p1.
Data products: No news as of this writing regarding the status of demonstrating to everyone's happiness the delivery of LS-001, LS-002, and LS-005 data products from the L1 pipeline to the GSSC.
Databases and related utilities
No news
Likelihood analysis
Jim resolved JIRA issue LK-40, responding to David Landriu's observation that changes to the selected optimizer in pyLikelihood was not updated in the information that is printed about the state of the program.
GRB tools
No news
Pulsar tools
Masa reports that he and James are continuing to work on implementing handling of ephemeris handling for alternate sets of timing parameters for binary pulsars.
Observation simulation
No news. The GSSC has asked, and Jim has agreed, that gttakosim be renamed gtorbsim in future releases. You may recall that the old gtorbsim is no longer being built anyway.
User interface and infrastructure (& utilities)
Not sure where this belongs, but Eric Winter reports that he has successfully ported v9r4p1 of the Science Tools to the HEASARC hmake environment. This built on his experience with doing the same for v9r2p2 and what could be reused was reused. I suspect that it was a complete port; for distribution to end users in real life (as opposed to GLAST Users Group beta testers), I think that the test applications and assorted other applications like makeFT* will be removed.
For the beta test by the GUG, Eric reports that he is likely to get back to making an extended version of ModelEditor that (to the extent possible) can translate between likelihood and obsSim source models and also will use ROOT GUIs.
I have heard that Analia finished making extended reference pages (equivalent to FTOOLS fhelp pages) for the Science Tools. These have been mostly reviewed by the tool developers and should be provided to Chuck soon. Analia may also start bringing the Workbook tutorials up to date.
Source Catalog
Met last week. Jean presented initial results from studying the effect of bright sources on source detection and characterization in their vicinities. The concern was that the bright EGRET pulsars especially are not well fit by the unbroken power-law spectra that are assumed for the Catalog analysis. Jean-Marc's investigations of the residual charged-particle backgrounds in the LEO 55-day data set were also discussed.
Science Tools Working Group
Our last meeting was January 16. With the workshop in Bari this week, and also the likelihood of a Catalog group meeting, most likely we will not meet again until next Wednesday.
Since Jan. 30, the current version of the Science Tools is v9r4p1. It has some important updates relative to v9r4 and will be the version made available by the GSSC to the GLAST Users Group for their 'beta test' in early March. The updates include standardizing on equatorial coordinates for the livetime cubes and fixes to some packages to make them work on Windows and/or Linux. Binary demodulation has been improved for pulsar simulations. If you are makeFT1 user, the new version will run much faster for large files with many columns. Toby has factor out HEALPix-related code from pointlike to a new package skymaps that will be used by Markus and Gulli, at least, in their work on analyis methods for diffuse emission.
Here is the complete list of updates since v9r4.
Data products: Warren has generated and delivered examples of LS-001, LS-002, LS-003, and LS-005 files to the GSSC using TVAC test data. The ingest system there is unhappy with the formats to varying degrees. The issues appear to be minor and mostly relate LS-001 ('full' event information - basically an extended FT1 file with ~200 columns of variables from the Merit files) and LS-003 (the livetime cubes). Rev A of the recently-baselined File Format Document is on the horizon.
Databases and related utilities
No news
Likelihood analysis
No news
GRB tools
No news
Pulsar tools
Masa reported last week that he and James are working on implementing handling of ephemeris handling for alternate sets of timing parameters for binary pulsars.
Observation simulation
No news. The updates mentioned in the last report have made it into the v9r4p1 release, as described above
User interface and infrastructure (& utilities)
No news
Source Catalog
Last met on January 23. Jean presented results from him and Gino on source detection and characterization in the L&EO data. These results were summarized in Jean's presentation last Friday at the LEO 55-day closeout meeting. The pointed-mode data proved challenging for the catalog analysis. Jim's prescription for tuning GTIs based on the angular distance of an ROI from the horizon was used to effectively filter against albedo gamma rays. The residual background, whether from albedo gamma rays or charged particles, was unmodeled, however, and led to poor determinations of the fluxes and spectra of the point sources.