Subject: Video meeting minutes, January 10, 1999
From: Kate Scholberg (kate@neutrino.kek.jp)
Date: Tue Jan 11 2000 - 07:29:53 EST
SNEWS working group video meeting minutes, January 10, 2000
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-- News from experiments: the news from Super-K (Mark), MACRO (Alec) ,
LVD (Pietro) and SNO (Art and Clarence) was all pretty much the same:
everything running stably, everyone survived Y2K.
SNO reports that they will be ready to send alarms within a month
or so; there are no fundamental objections in the collaboration
for automated alarms some time after that. Some work still needs
to be done to expand the alarm distribution.
AMANDA is undergoing a SN hardware upgrade now (Adam Bouchta is at the
South Pole), which will include time resolution improvement, although
it's not yet clear how much.
-- SNEWS work:
* Pietro has installed the new "gsboom" server machine at LNGS,
although the coincidence server code is not yet running on it.
* I have upgraded the client code such that each client will loop
through a list of servers and send email to each. Individual
experiments should upgrade their alert client software. (New code is
available in the repository on kaboom). We still have to decide how
to deal with simultaneous coincidence alarms issued by more than one
server.
* Alec has implemented PGP signing of alert messages, so that
astronomers can be sure that the alerts come from us. He's still
working on the secure socket implementation, which is a bit trickier.
We haven't yet consulted any security experts.
-- Clarence reported on a discussion with NRC timing expert Rob
Douglas. The specific plan for inter-experiment time calibration is
starting to crystallize. Some highlights:
* We need 3 main gizmos: an external GPS receiver, a frequency
standard (preferable a Rb oscillator) for time transport inside
the laboratories, and a time interval counter. Rob suggested
some specific models for each.
* Rob recommends an initial flurry of calibrations--
perhaps once a month, for 8 months or so, spanning both hot and cold
weather -- followed by a regular, less frequent calibration routine
(say, a couple of times a year).
* If we want credibility with the international astronomical community,
we may want to make calibration stop(s) at BIPM in Paris.
(More detailed minutes of this discussion will be posted to timing
group mailing list).
-- A coordinated downtime website is now ready for action. Designated
reps from each experiment can now view a table of downtime and enter
their own experiment's downtime. (The only thing I have left to do is
allow entry of times in the local timezone of each experiment;
currently times must be entered as UTC). SNO and Super-K have both
approved downtime coordination at recent collaboration meetings.
-- Funding possibilities for Snews: I am pursuing the idea of a DOE
funding proposal, to be submitted on a fairly short timescale. This would
cover hardware (the most significant of which would probably be the
timing calibration equipment) and travel, but not personnel. I'm
working on a draft and will circulate it shortly. Another possibility
is NSF funding, which may be a good resource for the outreach and
astronomical community connection side of SNEWS; Bob Svoboda has
expressed interest in this. Pietro may also have some access to LNGS
funding, and NRC may be able to contribute as well.
-- AAS talk summaries:
* Alec will be giving a general SNEWS talk.
Here's a rough outline:
-- science of SNEWS, motivation
-- description of what we can do
-- what astronomers should be thinking about
He will stress that we cannot provide angular information yet. We
also can't provide a firm date for automated alerts (which will have to be
decided by the advisory board) but "sometime in 2000" is probably fair
to state.
* Clarence will give a talk about timing verification. He will
describe the motivation-- the desire to have excellent timing for data
for physics (both astrophysics and neutrino physics) as well as
triangulation -- and the plan for implementation.
We also considered what we'd like to accomplish via discussions with
astronomers at this meeting. Leif Robinson from Sky&Telescope will be
there to talk about the amateur connection. It would be good to take
to opportunity to discuss putting into action his idea for testing the
amateurs' talents by running test alerts based on predicted variable
objects. Another possibility is to try to determine *background rate*
as well as signal detection efficiency, i.e. we could issue some test
alerts for which there is *no* corresponding variable object, to see
whether any bogus objects are found. (One worry related to false
alerts has been that issuing non-"gold" alerts could lead to amateurs
or small telescope observers could find bogus novae or whatever, and a
false alert would "snowball"...we may be able to quantify how
reasonable this fear is.)
-- Tentative date for next meeting: Feb 14, 10 am EST. Art suggested
that we invite some astronomers: e.g. Leif Robinson, John Bahcall, Bob
Kirshner.
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