2008 April 29
More of the same, work-wise. Although the first dataset I’ve been looking at hasn’t quite been exhausted, I feel like I’ve gotten probably 90% of the things out of it that I could hope for, so I’m moving on to the next batch. This is also a good thing since the second batch has some experiments in it that will hopefully help me think about what to plan for my next observations. Getting more data should be a priority for me, but it’d be smart to spend time thinking about how to get the best-quality observations, so I haven’t gone and asked for more time just yet.
In particular, in the second dataset I tried an experiment with an alternative way of scheduling my observations that saves a whole bunch of time that I’ve been spending in pointing the telescopes. The trade-off is that there’s a larger average interval between when I calibrate the antennas and when I observe the science targets. I need to figure out whether the larger interval reduces the quality of the data or not — if not, I can start getting a lot more data per hour spent observing, which would be nice. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to convince myself pretty quickly that the data are, or are not, of sufficiently high quality, but that’s the kind of thing that’s a bit subtle to evaluate. Something to investigate tomorrow.