Last week, I announced that we would be changing the naming convention for the master calibration frames, and that the change was "imminent." Well, today was the day. The BANZAI pipeline has been updated, and now the master calibration frames have names beginning with the site and telescope codes where the data were acquired.
The change in naming convention is just one step toward "real time" BANZAI processing. We expect that the "real time" pipeline will be completed sometime in February. When that pipeline is deployed, the "quick look" data products will no longer be available. Instead, the final data products will be available on the same timescale as the "quick look" products were, i.e. within a few minutes after the shutter closes. The final data products will retain the "e91" designation in their names. ----- I will alert you when we've identified a release date for the new pipeline.
Here's another change that's coming soon. Now that all Sinistro imagers have Archon controllers, we are able to reduce the CCD readout times. The current overhead for readout+processing is 38s. We will reduce that overhead to 28s. We plan to deploy the change network-wide on February 5. Requests for observations scheduled after Feb 5 will have their durations shortened. Be aware that the result of the "Fill" button on the Observation Request Form will yield different numbers of frames before and after the change. We will attempt to identify requests that were created using the "Fill" feature before the Feb 5 transition and advise those users to modify their number of exposures (to avoid missing an event at the end of an observing window).
Other news:
- The NRES unit at McDonald Observatory was made available for science observations before the night of 2019-01-21.
- The Spectral camera (fs01) on the 2m at Siding Spring was put back into service before the night of 2019-01-22.
- A new SBIG camera (kb56), on the 0m4b telescope at Siding Spring, was made available for science observations also on 2019-01-22.
