[Lofarpwg] LOFAR LBA census draft -- ready for commenting

Patrick Weltevrede patrick.weltevrede at manchester.ac.uk
Fri Aug 23 15:34:57 UTC 2019


Hi Anya,

Regarding Fig. 2 - How much data is removed is also evident from the top 
panels. So I don't think that is a particular strong reason for having 
the dynamic spectra there.

Cheers,
Patrick


On 23/08/19 16:20, Anna Bilous wrote:
> Hi Patrick,
>
>
>
>     Figure 2: I don't think having the dynamic spectra adds a lot, so
>     I would remove them. In addition I had a question about the
>     cleaned freq vs phase plots: why are there white rows which do not
>     appear in the uncleaned version? Rows with empty samples appear as
>     orange for other rows.
>
> I'm not sure for now about removing dynamic spectra, I think they make 
> a good illustration of how much band was deleted. I'll take a look at 
> the color issue.
>
>
>     Figure 3: I don't really see the point in showing for each pulsar
>     & beam what fraction of the data was deleted. I think that if this
>     information should be available to the reader, then it should be
>     in a table in the appendix. At the moment the figures in the paper
>     itself (excluding the appendix) is dominated by plots which show
>     that the data is non-ideal (two large figures about dropped
>     packets & RFI, two small figures about interesting stuff related
>     to the sample). If you want to show something related to the
>     zapped fraction, I would make a histogram of the fraction of
>     useful data, which is much smaller. I also don't think there is a
>     reason to keep the inset. As you already do, you can simply state
>     in the text that there is no correlation with date. Making the
>     plot was a useful diagnostic for us, but the information in the
>     inset will not be particularly useful for the reader.
>
>
> I agree with that, that plot remained from the days when we were 
> trying to assess the amount of damage. I'll move the information to 
> the summary table in Appendix and add a short description to the text.
>
> Cheers,
> Anya
>
>
>
>
>     Section 4: I think this is part of "Observations and data
>     reduction", so I would make it a subsection of section 3.
>
>     It would be great to have this published!
>
>     Cheers,
>     Patrick
>
>
>     Abstract - remove "Despite some telescope malfunction". I think it
>     only puts off readers from reading the paper, and it is not
>     particularly useful for the reader to read at this point.
>
>     Section 2: 2nd paragraph - Add a sentence at the end like "The
>     consequence is that only 88 out of the 194 pulsars which are in
>     the HBA census were observed and discussed here." At the moment
>     the text doesn't quite explicitly states if only HBA pulsars were
>     observed, or all pulsars HBA pointings are available for (without
>     the pulsar necessarily being detected).
>
>     3rd paragraph:
>
>     with AN incoherent dedispersion scheme.
>
>     only compensated FOR between channels
>
>     The proposed source sample therefore ONLY? included pulsars with
>     sufficiently (if only is not missing from the sentence, then I
>     don't get the point of the paragraph)
>
>     without ephemerides updateS.
>
>     hoping to DETECT strong single pulses.
>
>     Last paragraph of section 2: At the moment it just says "here is a
>     plot" without a conclusion attached to it. I think it is there to
>     back up the last statement from the previous paragraph. So I would
>     delete the last paragraph and simply write: "with some preference
>     for closer/brighter sources (SEE FIG. 1)."
>
>     Caption Fig. 1: I would remove "(see text for more information)",
>     since the text kind of says this is done in an, at least for the
>     reader, undefined way. Also, "THE scattering time was estimated
>     with THE Galactic"
>
>     Footnote 2: Either in THE original ATNF (and end the sentence with
>     a .)
>
>     Section 3:
>
>     "(beam 0 on the NOMINAL POSITION OF THE TARGET"
>
>     "private sources" - clarify these is Lovell and GBT positions.
>
>
>     observations at the Jodrell, Lovell -> observations with the
>     Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank
>
>     in many cases the initial DM -> in many cases the DM as derived
>     from higher-frequency observations
>
>     “old” -> these incorrect
>
>
>     of THE relative signal strength difference
>
>     "for each time/frequency data cell in phase-integrated dynamic
>     spectrum" - I'm not 100% sure what this means, so please clarify.
>     Phase-integrated means integrated over pulse longitude? So that
>     means you get 300 (nr freq channels) numbers per 5 second subint?
>
>     Caption Fig. 2: An example of diagnostic plots without (left) and
>     with (right) dropped packed cleaning APPLIED for one observation
>     of THE bright pulsar B0809+74. The upper row of plots shows the
>     statistic of THE two polarizations, the lower PLOTS SHOW THE
>     dynamic and folded spectra, waterfall diagram, and the average
>     profile.
>
>     Figure 2: The plots should have tick marks. The horizontal
>     labelling of the top plots is confusing. There are four pannels.
>     The upper three have (I assume) a horizontal axis corresponding to
>     frequency (as shown at the top). Only the lower panel has dP as
>     the horizontal axis. However, for the middle two plots this is not
>     clear from the figure. Having tickmarks in all panels would help.
>     Possibly reducing the gap to zero for the first 3 panels would
>     also clarify they share the same horizontal axis, but the lower
>     panel not.
>
>
>     For a few pulsars (namely,
>     B0105+68, B0643+80, B0656+14), the data was contaminated
>     to the point where no cleaning (manual or automatic) could help.
>     Thus, we exclude these pulsars from our sample.
>     ->
>     For only 3 pulsars (namely, B0105+68, B0643+80, B0656+14), the RFI
>     prevented useful analysis, hence they were exclude from our sample.
>
>
>     "Overall, the fraction of band that has been deleted due to
>     dropped packages or RFIs is quite substantial" - I fully agree
>     with Joeri's suggestion related to this paragraph.
>
>     Section 3.1
>
>     We adjusted pulsar period P and DM with the PSRCHIVE pro-
>     gram pdmp, maximizing integrated S/N of the frequency- and
>     time-averaged profile over the set of trial values of P and DM.
>     ->
>     We adjusted THE FOLD PERIOD AND THE INTRA-CHANNEL DISPERSION DELAY
>     (i.e. adjusting the pulse period would involve sending a missile
>     to the pulsar!) with the PSRCHIVE program pdmp, maximizing (remove
>     integrated) THE S/N of the frequency and time-averaged profile.
>     REMOVE REST OF SENTENCE
>
>     initial number of PHASE bins
>
>     Caption figure 3:
>     Pulsars are ordered by the maximum deleted fraction.
>     ->
>     Pulsars are ordered by the highest deleted fraction of the beams.
>
>     Same caption: Delete "Pulsars B0656+14, B0105+68, and B0643+80,
>     were excluded from the analysis due to unmanagable RFI contamina-
>     tion." -> Already said in text, so no need to repeat this,
>     especially given the text is quite negative.
>
>     Back to section 3.1:
>
>     thus for brighter pulsars THE DM may have A BIAS depending on the
>     assumed profile evolution.
>
>     About the same sentence: you quote the pdmp DM's right? In that
>     case the "assumed profile evolution" is that there is no profile
>     evolution. It would be good to clarify this.
>
>     Fig. 4 shows THE CORRELATION BETWEEN DM and the estimated
>     scattering time over period for the detected and non-detected pulsars.
>
>     Section 3.2 - I agree with Joeri this should not be part of
>     "Observations and data reduction"
>
>     Section 4:
>
>     Folded data files were calibrated
>     ->
>     The folded data were calibrated
>
>     A coherence factor of 0.85 was used: is there a ref for the 0.85?
>
>     The off-pulse windows
>     ->
>     The on and off-pulse windows (surely you need the on-pulse window
>     as well as the off pulse window).
>
>     Judging from the relatively well-measured spectra (e.g.
>     PSRs B0809+74, B1133+16, B1508+55, and others), the LBA
>     measurements stay within the spread of literature points, which
>     is by a factor of few.
>     ->
>     For those pulsars for which multiple spectra have been published (e.g.
>     PSRs B0809+74, B1133+16, B1508+55, and others), the LBA
>     measurements are consistent with the reported fluxes, which vary
>     by a factor of a few.
>
>     adopting adopted -> adopting
>
>     THE total flux density error
>
>     Interestingly, 19 out of 44 detected pulsars WERE DETECTED WITH
>     THE HIGHEST S/N IN A side beam
>
>     TEC (like DM) should not be in italics in equation 1 and the text.
>
>     5.1
>
>     combined with the literature measurements
>     ->
>     combined with published measurements (i.e. not a measure of
>     literature, which might be so many kg of A&A papers per year).
>
>     PL is undefined
>
>     5.2 - It would be great if the suggestions of Michael and Joeri
>     could be used to beef up this a bit, which would also help the
>     conclusion section and the abstract.
>
>     That's it! Great work!
>
>
>
>     On 16/08/19 07:53, Anna Bilous wrote:
>>     Dear all,
>>
>>     please find attached the draft of LBA census. Please let us (myself,
>>     Louis, JM & Vlad) know if you have any comments on it. We would like
>>     to submit it on Aug 30 due to Louis'es graduation constraints. Sorry
>>     for the quite short notice, but the paper is short and very simple, so
>>     it should not take long to read it.
>>
>>     Cheers,
>>     Anya
>>
>>
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>
>
>     -- 
>     Dr. Patrick Weltevrede, senior lecturer in pulsar astrophysics
>     Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics,
>     School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester
>
>     Office 3.210 Alan Turing Building
>     Tel: +44 (0) 16127 54162
>     Website:http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/
>

-- 
Dr. Patrick Weltevrede, senior lecturer in pulsar astrophysics
Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics,
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester

Office 3.210 Alan Turing Building
Tel: +44 (0) 16127 54162
Website: http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/

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