The Nightwatchman

Edition 3

Spring 2002

Hilo, March 1

TSS Support

Since our last newsletter, the JCMT TSS corps and the current operational 
model have continued largely unchanged.  On the personnel front, while the 
four full-time TSSs continue to support the bulk of nighttime scientific 
operation as before, Jan Wouterloot is now partnering Robin Phillips in 
providing occasional augmentation to the TSS support at JCMT.  Nick 
Jessop, who was doing likewise, departed JCMT earlier this year.

The new 16-hour nighttime operational model, which underwent an interim 
test period for much of last year, has effectively been ratified as the 
approved near-term operational model.  Additionally, the TSS schedule for 
supporting this model has been further refined to better enable TSS 
coverage of the 16 hours and to allow for more flexibility and scheduling 
according to personal preference.

report.pl and the "Baby" OMP

As those of you who have recently observed at JCMT know, the nighttime 
observation reporting procedure has changed somewhat.  Gone are the 
text-based free-form files that observers would send off at the end of an 
observing shift;  here now is a Unix/Linux Perl-based reporting tool.  
This new tool is known as report.pl and is integrated with the "Baby" OMP 
-- the first step of the Observation Management Program.

While the observer will primarily see the nicely-formatted text and HTML 
versions of the report.pl program output, together, report.pl and the 
"Baby" OMP tools serve several purposes.  First, this new reporting tool 
interacts directly with the template-based queue observation page, 
allowing real-time updates to the listings of finished and unfinished 
observations. Secondly, those queue observation pages, which are updated 
immediately and automatically, now are tied to the program databases with 
a new web-based front-end.  This interface will better enable observers to 
evaluate and select which programs are most appropriate given the sidereal 
time and the sky opacity, thus making the nighttime observing more 
efficient and the observing program selection much quicker.

Additionally, the report.pl and "Baby" OMP combination has dramatically 
freed up members of the scientific staff from what were once tedious, 
manual updates of the queue observation records.  This automatic database 
interaction saves roughly a half staff member per year (not sure which 
half, though) and thus allows staff to concentrate more on telescope 
operation and less on bookkeeping.  Additionally, this reporting of 
observations now allows from prompt and automatic e-mailing of PIs and 
CoIs when data is obtained for their program and sends them information on 
how to automatically retrieve the pre-packaged data themselves.  Lastly, 
this queue database allows for automatic extraction of template 
information, including all coordinates for the source catalog, further 
eliminating time-consuming bookkeeping and lessening the possibility of 
error.

Primarily developed by Robin Phillips, Elese Archibald, and Remo Tilanus, 
these recently-introduced observing tools are expected to contribute 
greatly to the effective and efficient operation of JCMT. While the OMP as 
a whole is a larger-scale project that is envisioned to become 
substantially more robust, including involvement in the at-the-telescope 
data-acquisition process, the small-scale introduction as an automated 
database-oriented queue-tracking program has provided an incredibly useful 
tool for observers and staff alike.  While the report.pl GUI will take a 
bit of getting used to for observers who haven't before used it, it should 
be a welcome interface for observers to the observation database.

You Don't Need a Weatherman...

Despite occasional hardware problems, the 186 GHz Water Vapor Monitor 
located in the JCMT receiver cabin has spent the much of this past 
semester providing a useful short-timescale opacity-measurement tool along 
the antenna's line-of-sight to provide additional data for comparison to 
opacity data obtained from the CSO, from SCUBA skydips, and from 
heterodyne receiver system temperatures.

Many thanks to all of you who have shown interest in our new weather page, 
using it not only from Hilo, HP, and Mauna Kea, but also from home 
institutions to eavesdrop on observations.  Although incongruent with our 
scientific mission, the page has proved to be most popular during 
snowstorms!  The page can be found at www.jach.hawaii.edu/~jkemp/wx.

And Now for Something Completely Different...

For those of you interested in the fascinating geology of the Big Island 
(or who have an intense interest in natural disaster), it might be worth 
taking a look at a recent article in Nature.  Several vulcanologists 
discuss early warning signs derived from volcano slippages, specifically 
with respect to dramatic GPS observations of the Kilauea volcano obtained 
on 2000 November 8.  The authors also posit that the meter of rainfall on 
the Big Island a week before the slippage (which perhaps many readers of 
this column experienced or at least viewed the resulting aftermath) might 
have been a contributing effect.

The original scientific article appears in the 2002 February 28 issue of 
Nature (volume 415, pages 1014-1018).  An interesting associated 
commentary on the possible ramifications of the geological movement 
described in the original article appears in the same issue (pages 
973-974).  Also, an interesting, concise, and slightly lower-brow review 
of the findings can be found in the 2002 March 5 edition of The New York 
Times (Science Times section).

La Citation du Semestre

A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of 
wonders.

Lord Dunsany, The Laughter of the Gods, 1922

Happy late spring eclipse chasing (annular solar and penumbral lunar x2)!

Jonathan Kemp

www.jach.hawaii.edu/~jkemp

j.kemp@jach.hawaii.edu