SUP 14 report

With the opening of the Spitzer Archive in May the SSC is now
supporting end-to-end observatory data acquisition and delivery on behalf
of the Guest Observer community while still fulfilling the
needs of the Legacy and GTO communities.  Scheduling and operation of the
observatory is running at near-peak efficiency and the operations staff
continues diligent work to optimize the use of this precious resource.
All three instrument pipelines are producing data products which have
enabled basic scientific analysis by the observing teams - as vividly
demonstrated in the publication of 86 papers in the
Astrophysical Journal Supplement Spitzer special issue.  Every one of the
developments above has required generous, if not heroic,
contribution of SSC staff time and effort, many times at the expense of
their promised time for individual science.  Given the modest level of
staffing and the magnitude of the task, the current status and
capability of SSC is simply remarkable.  Much remains to be done and
there are several issues requiring near-term attention, but the SSC can
be proud of their achievement and they are deserving of the
community's gratitude.

Staffing issues:

    The SUP recognizes that the options for expanding SSC staff are
    limited and that pending issues must be addressed largely within the
    existing staffing profile.  Nevertheless, SSC has benefited recently
    from receiving 3 FTEs at this critical time from reallocation from
    within the Spitzer Project Office.  These incremental positions have
    been extremely valuable in addressing pipeline development and
    archive issues -- both of vital interest to the user community.  The
    SUP encourages the project to continue to investigate the internal
    re-distribution of funding to the SSC.  One of Spitzer's most
    valuable characteristics is the 5-year length of its mission which
    enables observations in the early years to feed back to observing
    programs later in the observatory's lifetime.  Now is the time to
    optimize the observatory's throughput to the scientific community in
    order to reap out-year rewards.  At this point, the SUP sees each
    incremental SSC position as directly addressing this critical issue
    of scientific throughput.

    Beginning in about a year the SSC will begin reducing staff as part
    of the original mission plan.  The SUP sees the beginning of this era
    of contracting resources as a particularly critical time.  Only now
    are the consequences and true personnel costs of routine data
    acquisition, processing, archive population and reprocessing, and
    Guest Observer support becoming apparent.  The staff is already
    spread thin.  At its next meeting the SUP would like to review SSC's
    plan for addressing this era of contracting resources and its
    implications for user, pipeline, and archive support.

    The SUP observes that many of the SSC employees have significantly
    split responsibilities, including those having primary
    responsibility for functions such as the archive and public
    affairs.  Given the mission-critical nature of the archive the SUP
    recommends that SSC management consider consolidating fractional
    FTE's so a single individual has full-time responsibility for
    archive management.  Similarly, given the importance of maintaining a
    functional and aggressive public interface the SUP recommends making
    public affairs a full-time responsibility for a single
    individual.

    Re-allocation of effort within the spectrum of existing tasks can
    also lead to greater productivity in serving the user community. The
    SUP notes that a disproportionate fraction of staff time is being
    consumed by the mechanical support of the GO proposal
    process.  Specifically, the evaluation and resolution of duplicate
    observations is absorbing substantial effort that could be
    dedicated to direct user or archive support and thus more effective
    use of the Observatory's data products.  The SUP recommends that the
    resolution of within-Cycle duplicate observations be given lower
    priority.  SSC should develop a plan which still permits reasonable
    checks for duplicate observations but with substantially reduced
    burden on the SSC staff.  This plan should be reviewed by the SUP and
    in place prior to the evaluations necessary for Cycle 2.


Visitors:

    Visitors and workshops provide natural conduits for feedback to the
    pipeline/archive development process.  The current plan - which will
    not accommodate visitors to SSC until later in 2005 - should be
    re-examined.  SSC should develop an explicit plan for
    visitor/community interaction at SSC and is encouraged to
    accelerate the initiation of a visitors program.  Users of the other
    Great Observatories have come to expect a robust and ongoing program
    of direct community interaction through workshops and
    on-site visits from guest investigators.

Structure and Navigability of Documentation:

    A number of users have commented (both positively as well as
    negatively) on the volume of documentation available to support
    proposal development and data analysis.  Users are appreciative of
    the extent and depth of the information available but, at the same
    time, details are often difficult to find amongst the large amount of
    material.  A user wishing to develop a new proposal has a choice
    between the skeletal "Quickstart Proposal Submission Guide" and the
    230-page "Observation Planning Cookbook."  Cookbook guides for
    post-BCD data analysis (APEX, MOPEX, IRSFringe...) are lacking in
    detail.

    At the same time, the structure and navigability of the SSC web pages
    could be improved.  The pages provide access to a vast volume of
    information, but the organization of these pages is often more
    web-like and tangled than hierarchical.  Some example observations
    from the front SSC web page can illuminate the issues.

    - the left-side menu navigation bar changes to a completely
      different menu bar when pursuing any of the menu links.
    - no reference to the list of Spitzer publications appears on the
      front page.  The Spitzer archive of publications is a primary
      reference and tool for users generating new proposal ideas.
    - users "New to Spitzer" are first directed to the 230-page(!)
      "Observation Planning Cookbook"
    - the main text frame on the front page is filled with a
      mixture of "what's new" items on a broad range of subjects.
      By contrast, the Chandra front web page provides a structured
      grouping of practical links in its main text window.
    - the ``Spitzer Observer's Manual'' is not linked on the front
      page.  After getting to this manual after following a couple of
      links one finds (36 pages into the sixth chapter) ``How to Use
      IRAC'' - which might be a new user's prime objective.

    Some restructuring, particularly of the top level page, would provide
    a more readily navigable interface for incoming new and seasoned
    Spitzer users.


IRS:

    The SUP notes that the state of the IRS pipeline continues to be a
    concern for the user community.  The S11 software delivery, and
    subsequent reprocessing of the entire archived IRS database, may very
    well address many of these concerns.  Rapid community feedback on the
    results of the S11 IRS reprocessing should be used to inform pipeline
    development resource allocation.  The SUP recommends that SSC
    assemble IRS-team members and GO's whose observations make
    significant use of IRS early next year, possibly coincident with the
    San Diego AAS, in order to assess the community's satisfaction with
    the S11 IRS data products and overall SSC IRS support.

Efficiency of the proposal process:

    The one-phase proposal process, requiring submission of both
    scientific justification and detailed AOR's supporting the
    observing plan has been identified as a burden on GO's.
    Plans that require large proposals to submit only
    example AOR's for GO2 are a step in the right direction.  Small
    proposers are still required to submit complete sets of AOR's with
    their proposals.  The SUP should examine the impact of these
    requirements on GO proposals following GO2 selection.

GO scheduling:

    Some GO's have expressed frustration with the lack of feedback
    concerning when accepted proposals will be scheduled on the
    Observatory.  The SUP recognizes that detailed long-term scheduling
    is costly, but does request that, if feasible, GO's be given
    non-binding guidelines as to when observations will likely occur. The
    SUP notes that as Legacy products become available and
    proposals naturally concentrate on follow-up observations of
    specific Legacy targets, long term scheduling will be essential to
    avoiding conflicts arising from substantial oversubscription of sky
    locations, particularly given Spitzer's visibility constraints.

Archive issues:

    Future Load: Opening a populated archive on May 11, as recommended in
    the previous SUP report, was a tremendous achievement for SSC. It was
    clear from the presentations at the meeting that SSC
    recognizes the challenges which lie ahead.  Demand is increasing
    substantially and will spike with the opening of archive access to
    Legacy data products.  At present, the archive appears to be
    seriously underscoped.  The next SUP meeting will occur after the
    archive has been opened for Legacy access.  At this time the SUP
    should review the state of the archive and its usage.  This review
    should be informed by robust statistics reflecting archive usage.

    Reprocessing: Each successive delivery of new pipeline software
    invites the opportunity for complete reprocessing of the archive
    data.  As more and more data accumulates in the archive, each
    reprocessing becomes an increasingly intensive task.  SSC should
    provide and advertise an explicit reprocessing plan which
    identifies a schedule and policy for reprocessing both to aid in the
    overall management of the archive as well as to permit users of
    Spitzer data to plan.

    Post-BCD Source Extraction: The IRAC section of the Spitzer
    Observer's Manual (page 121) states that post-BCD processing
    ``... detects and extracts photometry of point sources, and merges
    these lists such that fluxes at different bands are associated with
    each other.''  Source extractions do not currently appear in the
    post-BCD section of archived data.  Some users are submitting
    proposals engineered around the expectation that post-BCD source
    extractions will be available at the time data are delivered as
    advertised.  Community exploitation of the First Look Survey -
    designed to enhance the scientific productivity of Spitzer by
    delivering a fiducial database characterizing the infrared sky - is
    hampered by the lack of available source extractions in the
    archive.  The SSC should define its plan for delivering source
    extractions to the archive and should make the project's
    documentation consistent with these goals.


Other issues:

    A number of features of the GO2 Call for Proposals such as theory
    proposals and joint collaborative proposals are new and should be
    advertised to the  community as soon as possible.

    Where practical, Legacy data product keywords and formats should be
    made uniform.