Cassiopeia Newsletter – Winter solstice 2015
- reneehlozek
- Dec 30, 2015
- 19 min read
Updated: Aug 22, 2025
Date: December 30, 2015
In this Issue:
President’s report
ALMA Update
Astrosat News
BRITE-Constellation News
Herschel-HIFI News
Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) Update
NRC Herzberg News
Editor: Magdalen Normandeau & Joanne Rosvick
Cassiopeia is CASCA’s quarterly Newsletter, published on or near the solstices and equinoxes (March 21, June 21, September 21 and December 21).
To submit a contribution please email cassiopeia.editors@gmail.com. All submissions must be received by the due date (usually 2 weeks in advance of publication) to be published in the next edition. I accept plain text and Word documents. Note that the formatting of your document will not be preserved. Please include any images as attachments in your email, not embedded in the text. Please include URLs in parentheses next to the word or phrase that you wish to act as link anchors.
President’s Report
By Chris Wilson, CASCA president
(Cassiopeia – Winter 2015)
Hi, everyone,
Well, the end of term is in sight but like many of you, I am still swamped with marking and student meetings. So this will again be a short report noting a few important highlights.
Our next annual meeting will be held in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The graduate student workshop will be on May 30th, 2016 with the CASCA meeting itself May 31st – June 2nd, 2016. The meeting will be held at the historic Fort Garry Hotel, located in the heart of Winnipeg, within easy walking distance of many attractions such as The Forks and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. More information is available on the meeting website. Registration will open in January.
Work on the report from the Mid-Term Review panel is well underway; the committee estimates that roughly 90% of the document has been written. The panel is holding weekly telecons and I think the report is converging quite quickly. While there is a certain amount of polishing that will be needed, the panel is working to have the full report completed early in the new year.
I am sure that many of you continue to follow the latest news on the TMT from Hawai`i. In early December, the Hawai`i Supreme Court invalidated the Conservation District Use Permit issued by the Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) to the University of Hawaii – Hilo to build TMT on Maunakea. This means that TMT will need to apply for a new permit in Hawai`i in order to build on the Maunakea site, with September 2016 the earliest possible date on which a new permit could be obtained. We continue to monitor the situation and will share information as it becomes available and can be made public.
Members of the ACURA Advisory Committee on the SKA helped to organize a workshop on “Canada and the SKA” that was held at the University of Toronto December 10-11, 2015. The meeting was an opportunity for the Canadian community to assess its main interests and activities for the SKA, and to identify areas for synergy and coordination. There was good turnout by astronomers from a number of Canadian universities and NRC-Herzberg, as well as participation by a number of potential industrial partners and a number of international astronomers as well. If you missed the workshop, the talks are expected to be made available soon on the conference web site.
The CASCA Board held two meetings this fall, a short one in October and our longer mid-year meeting in December. These meetings are held electronically to save time and travel costs. We also discuss issues as they arise via email and igloo (a community forum software). The new Diversity and Inclusivity Committee has been established; its first chair is Dr. Brenda Matthews from NRC-Herzberg and you can find the membership and terms of reference on the CASCA web site. Another task at this time of year is identifying new members to serve on CASCA committees: a big thank you to everyone who has agreed to serve our community in this way!
One of the major areas of discussion over the past 18 months has been the Westar trust and the Westar Lectureship. In my previous report, I described how the Board had committed a portion of the income from the Westar funds to support the Discover the Universe Initiative. A big focus over the next 6 months will be working to re-establish the Westar Lectureship series. The Westar lectures occurred quite regularly in the 2000s but as far as I can tell was overtaken in 2009 by the International Year of Astronomy and never restarted. The CASCA Board is working with our EPO committee and Discover the Universe to implement a new model that combines a Westar lecture by an astronomer with hands-on teacher training activities offered by Discover the Universe. Expect to see a call for volunteers in early 2016.
Happy holidays!
ALMA Matters
Submitted by Gerald Schieven (Cassiopeia – Winter 2015)
Cycle 4 Proposal Call Pre-announcement
The JAO has issued a “Pre-announcement” for Cycle 4 proposals, the call for which is expected in March with deadline in April 2016. Among the new capabilities expected in Cycle 4 are:
at least 40 antennas in the 12m-Array, 10 in the 7-m Array, and 3 antennas in the Total Power array
ACA stand-alone proposals
9 configurations with maximum baseline ranging from 155 m (all Bands), to 12.6 km for Bands 3, 4 & 6, 5.3 km for Band 7, and 2.7 km for Bands 8, 9 & 10
solar observing
millimetre-wave VLBI in collaboration with the Event Horizon Telescope
Cycle 4 Preparation
Shortly after the call is issued, the NRC Herzberg Millimetre Astronomy Group (MAG) will be holding web tutorials on proposing for ALMA. Details will be sent out in advance through the CASCA exploder and Canadian ALMA user email list (see below) for those who would like to participate. In addition, if your institution is interested in holding a local ALMA workshop, please contact gerald(dot)schieven(at)nrc-cnrc.gc.ca to discuss how the MAG can help.
Cycle 3 Canadian Statistics
Of the 1578 unique proposals submitted to ALMA for Cycle 3, 151 had some participation from people at Canadian institutions (36 as PI). Of these, 44 (6 PI) were awarded high priority (A or B) status, comprising 313 hours of the 2133 hours awarded (~15% of the total). In Cycles 1 and 2, projects with Canadian participation were awarded ~16% and ~11% of the total time respectively. Canadian PI projects were awarded ~18 hours in Cycle 3, roughly 2.6% of the North American allocated time. The number of Canadians involved in ALMA proposals is significant, with 55, 74, and 75 individuals as PI or co-I on all ALMA proposals in Cycle 1, 2 and 3 respectively.
As of October 25, there were 218 refereed publications using ALMA data. Of these, 37, or nearly 18% of the total, had authors or co-authors from Canadian institutions.
ALMA Development Studies
North America issued a call for proposals for ALMA development studies which were due in June 2015. A panel of highly qualified members of the astronomical community reviewed the study proposals. Seven Studies from 34 proposers representing ten institutions in the US and Canada fit within the funding envelope and were proposed for North American funding with the consent of the US National Science Foundation. One of the studies, “Digital Correlator and Phased Array Architectures for Upgrading ALMA”, involves participation by DRAO. Other approved proposals include studies to improve calibration in windows contaminated with atmospheric spectral lines, to enhance visualization of large data sets, and to improve the performance of ALMA’s SIS mixers. Funding will commence in 2016. Further details on these projects can be found in the December NRAO e-News.
Canadian ALMA Users’ email list
A new email distribution list has been created (to replace the previous list which was lost due to the cyber incursion at NRC) for Canadian users of ALMA. The moderated list will be used to distribute information of specific interest to the Canadian ALMA community. Please contact gerald(dot)schieven(at)nrc-cnrc.gc.ca to register for the list.
Data Reduction Party
NRAO is hosting a “Data Reduction Party” January 27-29, 2016, in Charlottesville, VA for people who have ALMA data and want to learn how to get the most science out of them. See this site for more details.
ALMA data reduction is very demanding on processing power and disk space. If you need assistance with ALMA data reduction in any capacity, the NRC Herzberg MAG may be able to help. Please contact Brenda Matthews (brenda(dot)matthews(at)nrc-cnrc.gc.ca) for more information.
Launch of Astrosat
Submitted by John Hutchings (Cassiopeia – Hivers/Winter 2015)
On Sept 28, ISRO launched India’s Astrosat observatory into its planned 600 km, 6 degree inclination orbit. The observatory comprises four X-ray telescopes, and two for UV and blue wavelengths. All instruments are co-aligned, and work simultaneously. Canada has a 5% time-share for providing the solar-blind detectors for UVIT – the UltraViolet Imaging Telescopes. The instruments are all operating, and the mission is in a 6-month period of commissioning and automating of operations. Instrument team demonstration-science observations will be released in April 2016, and team observations will continue until proposal-time observing begins in September. A call for the first Canadian proposals will be issued in ~March, and these may request observations from all instruments. CSA are funding an expert to support Canadian proposals and data processing for UVIT.
Astrosat offers a new and unique facility for Canadian research, and its performance appears to be excellent. UVIT in particular offers wide-field imaging in 3 simultaneous wavelength channels, with ~1” resolution, and a suite of filters and gratings. Moreinformation may be found at this site.
The first UVIT observations were made on Dec 1, following a planned interval to allow for full outgassing. The operations efficiency and data handling are being ramped up slowly, as is normal for a complex space observatory, but the spacecraft and instruments are working well, in some cases exceeding specifications.
BRITE-Constellation News
Submitted by Gregg Wade (Cassiopeia – Winter 2015)
Introduction
BRITE-Constellation (where BRITE stands for BRIght Target Explorer) is a network of five nanosatellites operating in low Earth orbit, designed to explore the properties of the brightest stars in the night sky.
The BRITE mission is supported by three countries — Canada, Austria and Poland — where Canadian funding comes mainly from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the prime contractor is the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies – Spaceflight Laboratory (UTIAS-SFL). The mission was planned to have 6 BRITE nanosats, a pair from each partner country, but one of the Canadian nanosats did not detach from the third stage of its launch vehicle.
Each BRITE nanosat (mass = 7 kg; dimensions 20 × 20 × 20 cm) has a 3-cm optical telescope feeding a CCD detector. The Constellation was designed to monitor photometrically through blue and red filters the brightness and temperature variations of stars generally brighter than V ~ 4 with precision, cadence and time coverage not possible from the ground. Each BRITE instrument has an enormous field-of-view: 24° square, large enough to encompass the entire constellation of Orion (but at a resolution of only about half an arcminute per pixel). That means BRITE-Constellation can collect data on several dozens of stars simultaneously.
The sample of the apparently brightest stars in the night sky is a sample dominated by the most intrinsically luminous stars in the Galaxy: hot massive stars at all evolutionary stages, and evolved intermediate-mass stars at the very end of their nuclear-burning phases. The main goals of BRITE-Constellation are to (1) measure the frequencies of pulsations (both acoustic and gravity modes) to probe the interiors and ages of stars through asteroseismology; (2) measure the rotational modulation of stars due to star spots carried across their disks; (3) search for exoplanets through transits; and (4) obtain light curves of massive eclipsing binaries. While goal (2) is often associated with cool solar-type stars, spots in the photospheres of luminous stars could be the sources of co-rotating interaction regions in the winds, possibly arising from magnetic subsurface convection in hot, massive stars.
To develop the optimum data processing and reduction strategies, a BRITE Photometry Tiger Team (PHOTT) was assembled. PHOTT explored and compared various pipelines and ways to minimise data artifacts. To extract the maximum scientific value from the reduced BRITE photometry, the BRITE Ground-Based Observation Team (GBOT) organizes ground-based observing campaigns, primarily high-resolution, high-S/N spectroscopy of BRITE targets. A detailed overview of the scientific motivation of the mission, and technical aspects of the system, is provided by Weiss et al. (2015, PASP 126, 573).
Mission Status and Data Releases
Five of the planned six BRITE nanosats are currently operating in low-altitude (600-800 km) orbits. The first pair of BRITE nanosats (from Austria) were launched on 25 Feb 2013, and the Canadian BRITEs were launched in August 2014 aboard a Russian rocket. The sixth satellite currently remains unusable in a higher elliptical orbit due to a malfunction in the release mechanism of the Russian rocket third stage.
A new ground station capability has been developed at UBC and will soon come on-line, permitting greater data downlink capability.
Seven data releases to BRITE Target PIs have occurred so far. The first was a set of science commissioning data, including (1) about 5 months of quasi-continuous observation of 15 stars in Orion. Subsequent releases were 6-month campaigns of fields in (2) Centaurus and Lupus (30 stars), (3) Sagittarius (18 stars), (4) Cygnus (37 stars), and (5) Perseus (31 stars) . (6) Orion was observed again. Most recently, a field (7) in Vela and Puppis was observed (20 stars). Very soon, data from the recently-completed Scorpius, Cygnus-II and Cassiopeia/Cepheus fields will also be released.
The first BRITE science results have been accepted in refereed journals: a paper by Weiss et al. on the pulsating magnetic star alpha Cir. Weiss et al. (A&A, in press) report two-colour BRITE photometry of this roAp star, excluding quadrupolar modes for the main pulsation frequency, and reporting remarkable differences in the rotationally-modulated flux in the blue and red bandpasses.
Additional papers reporting results for hot, pulsating stars and classical Be stars have also recently been submitted for publication.
The first BRITE science conference, “Science with BRITE Constellation: Initial Results” took place during 14 – 18 September 2015 in Gdansk Sobieszewo, Poland. Presentations authorised for public release are available on the conference website.
A workshop related to a large-scale spectropolarimetric survey of BRITE targets was held at the MeudonObservatory on October 26-30, with 19 participants. The BRITE spectropolarimetric survey is proceeding nominally, with expected completion in March 2016. Magnetic field has been detected in 47 stars so far, and follow-up observations are being acquired or planned for many of them. Two papers have already been published (Shultz et al. 2015, Neiner et al. 2015) and many others are in preparation. A second BRITE spectropolarimetric workshop will be organized from 14-18 November 2016 at the Meudon Observatory near Paris.
Mission Management and Contact
Executive decisions about the mission are made by the BEST (BRITE Executive Science Team), consisting of representatives from all three partner nations. The Canadian BEST members are Tony Moffat (BEST Chair, Université de Montréal), Jaymie Matthews (BEST vice-Chair, UBC), Slavek Rucinski (University of Toronto), and Gregg Wade (Royal Military College), with Jason Rowe (Université de Montréal) and Stefan Mochnacki (University of Toronto) serving as non-voting BEST members.
Setting priorities on BRITE targets and science goals was overseen by BEST, with input from the BRITE International Science Advisory Team (BIAST), consisting of 130 astronomers around the globe. Interested in joining BIAST, to participate in data analysis, and receive monthly mission updates? Please contact BEST through Tony Moffat (moffat@astro.umontreal.ca).
Neiner, C.; Buysschaert, B.; Oksala, M.E.; Blazère, A., 2015, “Discovery of two new bright magnetic B stars: i Car and Atlas”, MNRAS 454, 56
Shultz, M.; Rivinius, Th.; Folsom, C. P.; Wade, G. A.; Townsend, R. H. D.; Sikora, J.; Grunhut, J.; Stahl, O.; and the MiMeS Collaboration, “The magnetic field and spectral variability of the He-weak star HR 2949”, 2015, MNRAS 449, 3945
Weiss, W.W.; Rucinski, S.M.; Moffat, A.F.J.; Schwarzenberg-Czerny, A.; Koudelka, O.F.; Grant, C.C.; Zee, R.E.; Kuschnig, R.; Mochnacki, St.; Matthews, J.M.; Orleanski, P.; Pamyatnykh, A.; Pigulski, A.; Alves, J.; Guedel, M.; Handler, G.; Wade, G.A.; Zwintz, K., 2014, “BRITE-Constellation: Nanosatellites for Precision Photometry of Bright Stars”, PASP 126, 573.
Weiss, W.W.; Frohlich, H.-E.; Pigulski, A.; Popowicz, A.; Huber, D.; Kuschnig, R.; Moffat, A.F.J.; Matthews, J.M.;, Saio, H.; Schwarzenberg-Czerny, A.; Grant, C; Koudelka, O.; Lueftinger, T.; Rucinski, S.; Wade, G.A.; Alves, J.; Guedel, M.; Handler, G.; Mochnacki, S.; Orleanski, P.;, Pablo, B.; Pamyatnykh, A.; Ramiaramanantsoa, T; Rowe, J.; Whittaker, G.; Zawistowski, T.; Zoconska, E.; Zwintz, K., 2015, “The roAp star alpha Cir seen by BRITE-Constellation”, A&A, in press.
Herschel-HIFI News
Submitted by Sylvie Beaulieu, Herschel-HIFI Instrument Support Scientist
(Cassiopeia – Winter 2015)
Herschel Science Archive (HSA)
The latest Herschel Science Archive (v.7.0) was released on 28 October 2015. In this release, you will find links from individual observations to associated refereed publications. This new feature is accessible from the query result page in the HSA User Interface by selecting the “DETAILS & PUBLICATIONS” button, and then clicking on the tab “Publications”. Footprints for photometric observations (PACS & SPIRE) greatly improve the accuracy of geometrical searches. Remember that Herschel data are 100% in the public domain.
University of Waterloo Group News
Since last August, the group has welcomed a new member, Dr Scott Jones, who is a recent PhD graduate from Western University. Scott is helping with HIFI data processing and analysis.
Please note that the Herschel-HIFI Waterloo group will cease operation by the 31st of March 2016. Although no support will be available from that date via the Waterloo group, we will try to maintain the webpage and keep it as up-to-date as possible.
The implementation of the Herschel Explanatory Legacy Library (HELL) is progressing well. A special one-week documentation retreat was held in October to allow a group of eight HIFI editors to concentrate on editing the HIFI Handbook, and several other documents that will join the HELL documentation repository. Permanent links to the ESA Herschel Project and to the Herschel Explanatory Legacy Library will be available through our webpage.
Herschel Interactive Processing Environment (HIPE)
While HIPE 13.0 is the current release, and HIFI_CAL_22_0 is the latest Calibration Tree, this autumn saw the last Astronomer Acceptance Testing for HIPE, with HIPE 14.0 due to be released to the community in mid-December 2015. HIFI_CAL_24_0 will also be released. We invite you to visit What’s New in HIPE for the changes in this new release and see below. Additional information can be found in the HIFI Instrument and Calibration page
HIFI Calibration
A new calibration tree has been implemented in HIPE 14.0. It contains substantial changes in the sideband ratio tables, as well as a complete intensity calibration uncertainty component model. The corresponding UncertaintyTable products are available in calibration -> Downlink -> Generic and were updated with the following uncertaintyType: HotLoadTemp, ColdLoadTemp, HotLoadCoupling, ColdLoadCoupling, SidebandRatio, OpticalStandingWavesLoads, OpticalStandingWavesDiplexer.
The new calibration tree also provides tables of spur warning channel flags for point and mapping modes. These flags are assigned based on a knowledgebase built out of the spur flags manually identified for spectral scans and populated in the calibration tree in HIPE 13.0.
The sideband ratio updates will imply changes in intensity at all frequencies in bands 1 to 4. No changes are expected in bands 5 to 7.
The identifyLines task was updated with the following: implementation of threading to speed up the task, improvements of the rejection of false detected lines, changes on the Herschel Spectral Line List columns names, implementation of the image band line identification for pointed and mapping observations, fix to the RMS computation, and the implementation of the exportLines task.
Level 2 Pipeline
For DBS Raster maps, the Level 2 spectra are no longer averaged – this was already the case for OTF maps; Introduction of a new calibration output providing a frequency-dependent intensity calibration uncertainty budget; Assignment of spur warning channel flag for all point and mapping modes.
Level 2.5 Pipeline
Changes to the output of the Deconvolution task: the single-sideband spectrum is now contained in a Spectrum1d called “dataset” (it was called “ssb” up to HIPE 13).
HIFI products
Flags are now applied to OFF spectra as well; Generation of a browse image for the reference spectra, when the option useReferenceSpectra is set to true; The FITS header keywords have been revamped in order to provide proper nicknames to the parameters featured in those headers.
Standing Wave removal
New parameter addMedianContinuum: allow the median continuum to be added back into the baseline fit flux [DEFAULT: False].
Baseline removal
New parameter addMedianContinuum: allow the median continuum to be added back into the baseline fit flux but only performs well for basemode=’sub’ and not basemode=’div’ [DEFAULT: False].
Deconvolution
The output deconvolution product ssb is now called dataset (please note that scripts prior to this change will break).
HiClass Export tool
Although this is not an HCSS development, it should be noted that GILDAS/Class now reads the HCSS-generated FITS without needing any prior conversion as it used to be the case using the HiClass task.
Documentation
With this latest release, you have access to the latest documentation updates for both the HIFI Data Reduction Guide, and the HIFI Pipeline Specification Manual. Specifically, you will find a revamp of the chapter “Flags in HIFI data”, section Quality Flags, and a new chapter called “Understanding the uncertainty table information in your data” has been added to the HIFI Data Reduction Guide.
Conferences, workshops and webinars related to Herschel
Water in the Universe: From Clouds to Oceans
ESA/ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, 11-15 April 2016
The University of Waterloo Herschel-HIFI Support Group is committed to assisting you with accessing data through the Herschel Science Archive (HSA) and in using the Herschel Interactive Processing Environment (HIPE) to process your data. Please do not hesitate to contact us. Our webpage has a dedicated page on Data Processing.
Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) Update
Submitted by Patrick Hall, MSE Advisory Group member
(Cassiopeia – Winter 2015)
Design work for the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) continues apace.
The MSE Science Requirements Document
The MSE Science Requirements Document (SRD) was formally configured in October after a 12 month effort by the international science team to revisit the basic science drivers of the facility and identify the key science enabling capabilities. The SRD is the top level requirement document that gives a clear direction for the conceptual design phase; all other technical documents flow from the SRD. Engineers are therefore working to the requirements set out in this document, and changes to it are made through a formal review and approval process.
The SRD will shortly be available for download at the “Documents” page of the MSE webpages. In parallel, an exposure draft of the Detailed Science Case – providing the scientific narrative of the science cases and context from which the SRD has been derived – is being finalised and will be available for download in the first quarter of 2016.
Activities of MSE’s International Engineering Team
MSE’s International Engineering Team met for a second time, on 14-16 October 2015 at the original Paris Observatory. This meeting was graced by a number of new participants, including those from Spain, Lausanne Switzerland, Durham, England, Lyon France and Meudon France. The workshop included discussion of the overall system architecture and the work packages designing the major subsystems.
Discussions at CFHT’s board meeting
This month’s CFHT Board meeting includes a full afternoon session devoted to MSE. Discussion will include the design work distribution, plans for science case review, operations planning, engineering status, budget and resources, and governance models.
Spain interested in joining the MSE collaboration
Spain, as represented by Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) and Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), have recently expressed a strong interest in joining the MSE collaboration. Letters of collaboration are expected imminently. Furthermore, Spain has offered to host the next MSE Team Collaboration Workshop, at La Palma. More details in the next Cassiopeia!
CFI proposal plans
A CFI proposal is being planned to support strong Canadian participation in the design and construction of MSE instruments and subsystems. If you are interested in being part of such a proposal and haven’t already been contacted, please contact Patrick Hall at yorkphall@gmail.com.
Web sites
Nouvelles du CNRC Herzberg/NRC Herzberg News
By Dennis Crabtree (NRC-Herzberg) with contributions from Chris Willott
(Cassiopeia – Winter 2015)
These reports will appear in each issue of Cassiopeia with the goal of informing the Canadian astronomical community on the activities at NRC Herzberg.
Feedback is welcome from community members about how NRC Herzberg is doing in fulfilling our mandate to “operate and administer any astronomical observatories established or maintained by the Government of Canada” (NRC Act).
Canadian Time Allocation Committee (CanTAC)
CanTAC met in October/November by a series of telecons to discuss and rank CFHT and Gemini proposals for semester 2016A. The CanTAC SuperChair for this meeting was Kristine Spekkens (RMC), while the Galactic panel chair was Stanimir Metchev (Western) and the Extragalactic panel chair was Scott Chapman (Dalhousie). Dennis Crabtree continues to serve as the technical secretary.
The full list of CanTAC members for the November meeting was:
Galactic | Extragalactic |
David Bohlender (Herzberg) | Arif Babul (Victoria) |
Christopher Johns-Krull (Rice) | Peter Capak (Caltech) |
Stanimir Metchev (Western) | Scott Chapman (Dalhousie) |
Leslie Rogers (Caltech) | Alan McConnachie (NRC Herzberg) |
Samar Safi-Harb (Manitoba) | Kristine Spekkens (RMC) |
Ingrid Stairs (UBC) | Ludo van Waerbake (UBC) |
Peter Stetson (Herzberg) |
For Semester 2016AB CanTAC received 40 CFHT proposals (25 Galactic and 15 Extragalactic) and 46 Gemini proposals (26 Galactic and 20 Extragalactic). There was a total of 615 hours requested on CFHT and 606 hours on Gemini. The subscription rates were 2.73 for CFHT, 2.6 for Gemini North and 3.2 for Gemini South.
The demand for both telescopes increased significantly from the last semester although the trend of receiving more Galactic than Extragalactic proposals continues. CanTAC felt the quality of proposals was quite high this semester.
CADC
The CADC developed the CANFAR (Canadian Advanced Network for Astronomical Research) computing infrastructure system for astronomers. CANFAR provides its users easy access to very large resources for both storage and processing, using a cloud based framework. The current system uses a mix of internal CADC resources and Compute Canada’s national computing resources to store and make available approximately a Petabyte of observational data, as well as significant computing resources.
NRC Herzberg received NRC investment money to enable the transfer of the bulk of the hardware and service needs of the CANFAR Network Enabled Platform from NRC-Herzberg to Compute Canada. The CADC has worked with Compute Canada to develop a detailed statement of work for the CADC/CANFAR/CC Transition Project (C3TP). This is a shared co-development project in which Compute Canada will develop generic cloud and data services which can be used by a suitably modified CANFAR system to provide specific functionality to CADC’s community. The CADC will work with Compute Canada to design these generic services.
JWST
It is an exciting time in the JWST project with activities on several fronts in the integration and testing phase of the observatory development. The four science instruments are midway through the third and final Cryo-Vacuum Test (CV3) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland. This 3 month long test at 40K simulates the conditions of the observatory in orbit, putting the instruments through a series of thermal, electrical and optical tests to provide flight-like data for verification and calibration. The Canadian FGS/NIRISS instrument team from the Université de Montréal, National Research Council, Canadian Space Agency, Space Telescope Science Institute and prime contractor COM DEV International are heavily involved in supporting these tests which run 24/7 for the 3 month period. At the time of writing, activities are progressing well and on schedule.
Another exciting event taking place now is the integration of the 18 primary mirror segments onto the telescope structure. Each hexagonal segment is made of lightweight beryllium with a very thin gold coating and measures 1.3 metres across. A robotic arm is used to lift and position each mirror. All 18 primary segments and the secondary mirror will be in place early in 2016. After that the fully-verified instrument module is to be installed onto the telescope.
In October 2015 the European Space Agency hosted a conference titled “Exploring the Universe with JWST”. This meeting brought together scientists from around the world to discuss how JWST will be used to tackle their science questions. Presentations can be found online at www.cosmos.esa.int/web/jwst/conferences/jwst2015 .
There is also a lot going on with the JWST ground system, in particular the pipeline, calibration and commissioning plans for the science instruments. The Canadian team is very active in all these areas to ensure that the powerful science modes of NIRISS are capitalized upon. With parallel observing now approved by the project, significant work is underway to see how NIRISS can be used in parallel to significantly enhance the efficiency of the observatory.
JWST will be launched into a halo orbit around L2 on an Ariane V rocket in October 2018.
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