Introduction: TAUVEX Status Review

The Agenda of the Status Meeting was as follows:

Professor Murthy began by introducing TAUVEX Team at IIA consisting of a total of 16 people including 4 short-term project scientists. Over 40 students have become involved in various aspects of the TAUVEX mission, most of them short-term project students. He stated that Ranjan Gupta from IUCAA and his student, Archana Bora, have begun work on a RESPOND project to analyze TAUVEX data.

The summary of the meeting:

1. The science plan is being prepared by Dr Safonova. Inputs are still awaited from other scientists innvolved. The science plan will be ready by the end of the year.

2. Document on data sharing is to be prepared. Document is ready but will be modified based on the discussion at this meeting. New document will be sent out to committee members on Oct. 31.

3. TAUVEX website is actively maintained and improved. There have been more than 18000 visits to date.

4. Various user tools being prepared including a coordinate converter and a tool to display and modify FITS headers.

5. The TAUVEX pipeline has been completed except for registration. Further tests and simulations are to be done. In particular, a full observing sequence is to be simulated. To be completed by Dec 31st 2006.

6. Interface document to be prepared with ISAC to govern transfer of data from Hasan to IIA. To be completed by Dec 31st 2006.

7. A special issue of BASI is in preparation containing information about the TAUVEX instrument, proposal tools and other information for the general community. It is decided to break the publication into two issues, one dedicated solely to the science plans for TAUVEX (following the March 2006 TAUVEX Science Workshop), the next issue will be dedicated solely to the Instrument aspects.

8. A CAD model of TAUVEX is required by the IIA team for calculation of scaterring into the instrument. Due: Oct 15th 2006.

9. The next Status Review Meeting to be held in January 2007.

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Data Pipeline Status
 
Software products from the Tauvex Software team, including data pipeline, data simulation, various general purpose tools for astronomy, etc. are available free for download. We have been following an open source policy with the entire software licensed under GNU Public License (GPL). A sketch of TAUVEX data flow path is given below:

Details of data pipeline software can be found on our Data Pipeline pages. The pipeline development started in early 2005 and the first stable release (August 2006) is ready. The software has been tested with simulated data using our data simulation software as well as real data obtained from various phases of TAUVEX instrument test procedures. The performance of the software was found to be satisfactory. On average, the pipeline software can process 1GB of level 1 data (raw data after removal of fillers) within an hour (3.0GHz Xeon, 1MB L2 cache, 1.5GB RAM, RHEL4). We are now working on optimizing the software. The list of incomplete modules includes the data registration. While the required software is ready, integration with the pipeline stream is not complete. The satellite telemetry stream contains crucial information for the data validity checks. We are in the process of finalizing the telemetry data format.

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Science activities at TAUVEX

1. Science Workshops

• 1a. As part of scientific activity, TAUVEX team is conducting science meetings. The very first of its kind has been held in July 2005, when the main strategic directions have been named and the working groups have been delineated. The next meeting was held in March 2006. The summary of that meeting is available on TAUVEX homepage.
  After two meetings, a considerable interest has arisen in the general scientific community. Several times we were asked a question of when it is going to be the next science meeting. Thus, we are planning a new science workshop for the March 2007. The Web address for the TAUVEX Meetings is: http://tauvex.iiap.res.in/htmls/workshops/ where all agendas, speakers and the presentations can be accessed.
  The summary of the latest Meeting is available here.

• 1b. As a result of the March 2006 Science meeting, we have decided to publish a special TAUVEX-dedicated BASI issue. The composition of that special issue will be as follows:

  1st BASI Special Issue:
  Articles from March 2006 Science Meeting presentations
  Responsible: (Margarita Safonova)
   
  2nd BASI Special Issue:
  • Chapter 1. Instrument presentation, responsible: (Jayant Murthy, E. Almoznino)
  • Chapter 2. Software presentation: data pipeline and tools, responsible: (Rekhesh Mohan)
  • Chapter 3. Project planning: straylight and orbital constraints, responsible: (P Gopakumar)
  • Chapter 4. Science planning: working groups and science objectives, responsible: (Margarita Safonova)

2. Science on the TAUVEX Webpage

• 2a. On our webpage we have created a science page, where most of the aspects of TAUVEX science are regularly being updated. The Working Groups page, for example, has a list of working groups, defined during the last two science meetings, with their respective leaders. Our science policy is that the observational data will be available for the public of India and Israel, and at present if anyone from the international community wishes to observe with TAUVEX, they have to find an indian collaborator. This has happened already, for example, we have received a very interesting proposal from a scientist of Netherlands. His proposal was of a considerable scientific interest and in parallel with some other established interests, so that the special Working Group was created: The Survey of the Galactic Plane.
  The Science planning page can be accessed at: http://tauvex.iiap.res.in/htmls/science/groups.html

• 2b. I must admit that there are problems, not all working groups are working with the full capabilities and thus we are experiencing some delays in the writing up of science plans.

• 2c. In another aspect of TAUVEX science, we are conducting regular TAUVEX seminars, on which various aspects of TAUVEX science and engineering is being presented and discussed. These seminars enable public, students and us, TAUVEX team, to better understand and get acquainted with various aspects of TAUVEX. These seminars are being put on our webpage, where the titles, speakers and, if possible, full presentations are given. Following some talks on our seminars, few individual topics for observation with TAUVEX have been suggested, some are:

  Miscellaneous Individual Topics

  • UV observations of pulsars. Gangadhara
  • UV flashes from planetary collisions. C Sivaram
  • Tracking GSAT with GMRT. CR Subrahmania
  • UV observations of ULXs. M Safonova

  The seminars are always put on the web page and can be accessed at: http://tauvex.iiap.res.in/htmls/science/seminars.html

3. Guest Observer Support.

We have created the Guest Observer page as part of the preparation of the main science document: Call for Proposals. On this page we suggest the strategy to the visiting scientists of the preparation of their proposals. We direct them to our online tools and, at present, we are in the process of creating additional help tools:

1. TAUVEX Observation Planning Tool (TOP)
2. Brightness checker.

Guest Observer page is accessible on our Webpage at: http://tauvex.iiap.res.in/htmls/guest.html

4. Call for Proposals

We are in the process of writing the Pre-Launch Call for Proposals. Certain points are being discussed with the TAUVEX Science Team.

5. Tentative schedule for all discussed issues

• BASI Issue: January 2007
• Next Science Meeting: March 2007
• Working Groups Plans: End of 2006
• Pre-Launch Call for Proposals: End of the year 2006
• First 3 Month´s TAUVEX Flight Planning:
  • 1st month - Outgassing
  • 2nd month - Calibrations:
    1. List of targets
    2. Constraints on them
  • 3rd month - Observations; Assuming launch date March 2007: Jan 2007

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