2008 July 18
Blah, another unplanned blog hiatus …
I’ve been thinking a bit about what I should prioritize on my broadband spectra project.
An important goal is to start getting new data, but that’s not something that I think can start happening quite yet. I’ve done some background work, and I think I have a good understanding of what I need to prepare for the next round of data collection. By the time I start getting more data, there will be a lot more knobs on the system that can be fiddled with, and I think I have a good understanding of what to do with all of them. The main thing I need to do is prepare observing script, which runs the array during my observations. That will probably take some time to get right. But that can sit on the back burner a bit since there are some engineering improvements to the array that I’d like to see happen before getting a bunch more data. Those improvements are on the way, but they’re not ready yet.
In the meantime, I’ve decided to try to get a very good reduction of the data that I do have. That’s what I’ve been working on for the past week or so, and I think I’m almost done. (I’m writing this post as the hopefully-final processing steps run on my computer.) That work has been a combination of improvements in my processing pipeline and more careful work with the data I have. There will undoubtedly be further improvements to the processing pipeline, but I’m pretty happy with what I have at the moment. And, from looking at the results I’ve been getting, the work that I’ve done on the data I have looks like it’s probably about as good as it’s going to get. Hopefully, by the end of today all of the number-crunching will be done and I’ll be able to step back and review the results I have. Then next week I can start working on my observing script so it’s ready when I’m ready to get more data.