WFIRST EXPO March Telecon

Brant Robertson bio photo By Brant Robertson

Telecon on 03/29/2017 at 11am PDT

Attendance

  • Brant Robertson
  • Mark Dickinson
  • Harry Ferguson
  • Steve Furlanetto
  • Jenny Greene
  • Alice Shapley
  • Risa Wechsler

March WFIRST Events / WGs

Members of the WFIRST EXPO team attended multiple working group telecons during March, including multiple Grism WG, Deep Fields WG, Scheduling WG, and Simulations WG telecons. There was an inaugural WFRIST DRM Telecon, and there is an SRR Science WG being established (see above). There were a variety of on-going discussions in the working groups that EXPO team members had direct input into:

a) Design Reference Mission Working Group

Chris Connor has organized a WFIRST Design Reference Mission working group to produce a DRM appropriate for the SRR/MDR process mid year. Brant Robertson and Harry Ferguson are representing WFIRST EXPO on the DRM WG. We have provided Chris Connor with a copy of our March 1 Deliverable document (later adapted into our Annual Report) and have offered to help adapt any of that material into the DRM as appropriate.

b) WFIRST Deep Fields Working Group

There were two Deep Fields Working group telecons held this month on March 8 and 22nd. EXPO team members attended both. We supplied the DF WG lead Koekemoer with a copy of our March 1 deliverable given that it outlines a possible GO Medium Deep Field program that builds on top of the SN Deep fields.

One major issue, which arose from B. Robertson and J. Newman’s knowledge of LSST, is that there will be a call for LSST Deep Drilling Fields later this calendar year. None of the LSST Deep Drilling Fields are in the WFIRST CVZ, which means that the visibility windows are typically ~<110 days. This opportunity to define a LSST Deep Drilling Field in the southern CVZ may be the best chance for assuaging coordination between LSST and WFIRST for the supernovae survey.

c) Simulations Working Group

The Simulations Working Group did not meet during March, but there was the finalization of a Simulation Tools White Paper by co-lead Molly Peeples. The white paper argued for the consolodation of the development of simulation tools to the SSOC, and while we support the development of such essential tools we felt that their development could be distributed among the SITs and SOCs depending on the concentration of expertise.

d) Scheduling Working Group Telecon

In this month’s scheduling working group telecon (Brant Robertson participated from EXPO), there was a discussion of block scheduling and how that might affect the GO program. To save costs on ground support, an idea under consideration is to remove follow-on constraints or orient constraints from GO program scheduling. This would be high disruptive to large-area programs that were mosaiced from multiple WFIRST pointings and hopefully would not come to pass.

e) Detector Working Group

There has been continual detector working group telecons roughly weekly. Harry Ferguson from EXPO has been participating, mostly to gain information on the current detector status. Most of, if not all of, the hardware requirements for weak lensing satisfy the GO program needs. Current issues include how to separate the brighter-fatter effect from inter pixel capacitance.

f) Filter Working Group

The Filter Working Group met this month, and EXPO was represented by Mark Dickinson. The working group discussed the Red Filter white paper presented by Helou and others at IPAC. The EXPO team, in considering filter options, ranked a second grism ahead of a red filter in our priorities previously. After hearing the presentation, we continue to hold the same position. We note, however, that a red filter would be welcome addition to WFIRST and have a substantial scientific return

Year 2 Work Plan

For reference, the work plan submitted with the original proposal can be found here:

WFIRST EXPO Proposal Work Plan

The WFIRST EXPO team is developing their year 2 work plan. This plan will be delivered to the project once complete, hopefully within the next two weeks.