[evlatests] planet tracking test last thursday

[Bryan Butler]

strange, since i loaded the data applying the normal flagging, etc., and 
there is still data there for all of the calibrator scans - i.e., they 
are not flagged as being off-source.  same is true of the various mars & 
venus scans.

the bogus pointings are from the "new-style" scans, so i've got some 
work to do on that obviously (on how i put it into obs2script, since i 
had it right for doing it manually before).  i'll have a look and see 
what i screwed up on that.

looking at the venus data more closely, the first venus scan actually 
shows venus (it's just weak so didn't show up when looking at the 
visibilities) when imaging.  2nd one doesn't though (but this is without 
editing).

so, i'm only suspicious now of my new-style tracking - it probably threw 
things off so bad by having such atrocious positions that no good data 
was taken for mars, or for the 2nd half of the venus part.

	-bryan


Ken Sowinski wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Oct 2007, Bryan Butler wrote:
>>
>> i did a planet tracking test last thursday.
> 
>> now, there were problems starting this file up - first i sent a
>> malformed script, then a wierd thing happened with the operator's
>> interface, so the operator (after talking to rich) aborted the script
>> and restarted it.  basically things didn't really start properly
>> observing until scan #6.
> 
>> i can say that this observation was a spectacular failure.  there is no
>> properly correlated data except on a single scan - the first of the
>> venus calibrator scans.
> 
> 
> I had a look at the archive to see what was happening.
> One of the methods produced totally bogus positions
> so that the antennas spent all their time chasing
> around the sky.  So much so that there was not enough
> time in calibrator scans for them to get back.  This
> is verified by the fact that the most antennas were
> flagged as off source most of the time.
> 
> I did not try to look at the record closely enough to see
> which method failed.  I don't know that the other was
> correct, but at least it produced plausible positions
> for Venus and Mars that were near the calibrators.
> 
> 
> We have made plans for what to do with SW time on Tuesday.
> Barry, if you want to do anything with this tomorrow be
> my guest.
> 
> I have preserved the 'f10' output during Bryan's test if
> anyone wants to look at it more carefully.