1. The ALMA Observation Support Tool Adam Avison UK ALMA Regional Centre Node

2. Overview Introduction to the OST Breaking the 4 th wall Simulation inputs Breaking the 4 th wall (reprise) Output to users ALMA cycle 0: An Education ALMA cycle 0: How things went

3. ALMA: A very brief introduction When in full operation ALMA will consist of 66 dishes operating between ~90GHz and ~1THz, on the Chajnantor plateau, Chile. Full operation is expected sometime in 2013. As of 10 days ago ALMA began Cycle 0 observations with ~16 dishes.

4. ALMA Observation Support Tool The OST is a web based ALMA simulator. Accessible from any standard web browser. Designed for those who are not interferometry experts. Written by Ian Heywood (Oxford). http://almaost.jb.man.ac.uk

5. USER’S EMAIL USER @ HOME/OFFICEOST @ MANCHESTER INPUT WEBFORM inc. LiveValidation OUTPUT WEBPAGE ADAM @ REST SUBMISSION NOTIFICATION SERVER SIDE CHECKS OST ADMIN SIMULATION SIMULATION COMPLETE! OST WORKFLOW Python/CASA backend Browser + e-mail Client

6. Breaking the 4 th wall - OST simulation of under illuminated Lunar surface

7. User Input. Array: Selects the array configuration. Currently has the two Cycle 0 configurations, the ACA and one called ALMA*. Sky Setup: Source Model. Can select from OST library or user Uploaded FITS file. Declination==Declination Image peak For rescaling input image peak value. Observation Setup: Standard observing characteristics e.g. Frequency, BW, resolution*, etc. etc.

8. User Input. Corruption: User can select from 3 PWV values. Good, Bad or Ugly. Behind the scenes: Noise is calculated using eqn 1. Comparison to simdata fairly good. Imaging: Standard interferometric parameters. Image Weighting, CLEAN application and output file format (FITS or MS). E-mail Address: Possibly the most important parameter.

9. Breaking the 4 th wall (reprise) - OST Simulation of ‘Super’ M4R10 Galaxy

10. Cycle 0: The results Over the ~95 Day call period 2064 jobs we submitted and completed successfully. Excluding IH and AA == 1846 by users. 19.4 jobs per day (average). 261 jobs caught in LiveValidation or server side checks. ~60 jobs for unique users caused the OST to fail. With only 6 remaining unresolved at the end of call*. Mostly FITS file issues see later slide. Daily OST usage: Solid blue line total number of successfully completed submissions. Dashed purple line total minus testing by OST admin. Solid Orange seven day running average. Vertical green denotes Cycle 0 proposal call, vertical red Cycle 0 deadline, vertical black separates months

11. Cycle 0: The results OST seems to have been well received internationally. A fun, though erroneous, statistic would be there are ~2 OST submission per Cycle 0 proposal submitted :D. The largest number of jobs came from the UK, then from the.com TLD (which is tricky to pin down). The largest number of unique users use the.com TLD followed by.uk and.jp. Both figures exclude AA and IH

12. Cycle 0: An Education FITS Headers: ‘Flexible Image Transport System’ or ‘Frustration Incarnate, Telephone Samaritans’. – 3 methods (at least) of defining WCS. – BITPIX values. (GIMP!) – Rotation, currently not handled by OST. Expect the unexpected: … and don’t expect all submitted jobs to make sense! Future upgrades: – Separate Hour Angle coverage. – Rotation handling. – Bigger library. – Some behind the scenes bits (mostly already done!). – Enhanced mosaicking capability.