Just got a reply from Paul Butterworth of the WMAP team to my inquiry about their progress:

"With additional data, the Science Team needs to do additional work to understand the calibration of the instrument to sub-percent levels, but we expect to release 5-year data before the end of this year."

Get ready for DR3, third peak.

Zahl. I know this is your shtick...but when you (not you personally) tell people you're going to...and then you don't....they lose interest. Seeing will be believing with WMAP this time. There's a cautious crowd out there for now. Pete.

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A second rate theory explains after the fact
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I suspect that this go-around will be a little better than last time. I suspect that they have less of a headache to deal with, since the choices on how to handle the data are mostly made now.

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Antoniseb. I hope so. I for one am interested to see how the axial symmetry in the polarimetry is coming along. pete

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A third rate theory forbids
A second rate theory explains after the fact
A first rate theory predicts...A. Lomonosov

I care a lot about the WMAP results, though I don't expect a huge revelation from the year five data, the way the first year data was, or with the polarization info in the third year data.

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Paul Butterworth's statement is similar to statements he made when he was asked by bautforum members about when the second year data was due out. One encouraging sign is that the last delay was due to the complex nature of the polarization data and it was said by a WMAP official last year that once the analysis techniques for polarization had been developed they'd be back on a schedule of yearly data releases. However, the last release was a year ago and presently we are getting vague statements about when the next release will occur. So, I agree with Pete in that seeing will be believing.

So, I suspect that the team will release the 5 year data later this year or perhaps release the 6 year data early in 2008. Either way, the results will represent an improvement in our understanding of our Universe, as noise goes down with the square root of the integration time.

I doubt WMAP will tell us anything new about it because their polarization maps are very noisy and have too limited frequency coverage to give rigorous treatment to galactic foregrounds. We will probably have to wait for Planck to see the low-l anomalies resolved one way or the other.

What will be interesting is to see how much they can improve the goodness of fit of the best LCDM model (4.5% in DR1, 13.9% in DR2). Will the power spectrum still show the same bites and glitches at the 20-100 multipole range? Will the higher multipoles show a preference for a running spectral index? These features could have serious implications for inflation if they are real.

"With additional data, the Science Team needs to do additional work to understand the calibration of the instrument to sub-percent levels, but we expect to release 5-year data before the end of this year."

Either you understand the instrument or you do not. Tweaking the calibration after-the-fact raises a bright red caution flag. There were pixel-by-pixel temperature calibrations templated into the second and third year data. What is not clear and to the best of my knowledge, not published, is whether these factors are consistent with the overall temperature cycling of the WMAP probe.

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jwj

It's ok not to know. We should try harder to find out.

The raw uncalibrated time ordered data is available here: http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/..._uncal_get.cfm

You are free to show specifically where the WMAP guys went wrong. So far nobody in the research community has challenged their calibration even though the full three year data set has been available for a year.

Nice, thanks!

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http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/...supplement.pdf

No need, just read the fine print:

If that is the best the WMAP team can sign up to, after five years of pouring over the data, I wouldn't expect anyone to think that additional analysis of this data set would be cost effective.

I would like one question addressed, though:

So how much weight was given to each year? There was signal degradation over time, so it is reasonable to apply more weight to the first year data. But I cannot find maps constructed soley from the 2d or third year data, and I don't know what relative weight was applied to each pass.

The three year map is virtually identical to the first year map...how much weight was applied to the second and third year data? 30%? 20%? 10%? 1%?

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jwj

It's ok not to know. We should try harder to find out.

The ILC map is not used in any CMB analysis except by some researchers in a non-rigorous low-l study.

As much as the effective observations per pixel parameter N_obs says. And those are low resolution maps used as a consistency check to study the influence of foregrounds on the polarization component of the data outside the Galactic plane as described in the WMAP Data Products archive on the LAMBDA site.

See chapter 2.3. in the paper you quoted. Both foreground reduced and unreduced full resolution 1st, 2nd & 3rd year maps are available for all frequency bands. If that is not enough, build your own from the raw data.

All in all, much ado about nothing. Your innuendo about their calibration being suspect remains unfounded.

Has anyone heard anything recently regarding the WMAP data release schedule? Here is a link to the 2006 Astrophysics Senior Reveiw which discusses the status of several NASA astrophysics missions, including WMAP: http://science.hq.nasa.gov/universe/docs/SenRev06.pdf

Here is a quote which gives us some idea what years the next data release may include: "Operations until FY09 are subject to the team demonstrating in their next Senior Review proposal that a 5 and/or 6 year dataset have achieved the anticipated reduction in statistical and systematic errors beyond the 3 year data. Funding should then ramp down in FY10 (as proposed0 to permit the completion of the data analysis and release of the final data products." Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the next Senior Review scheduled for the first half of 2008? If it is, in other words, then the next WMAP data release must take place between now and then if the team wants to avoid future funding cuts. I predict that they'll release the 5 and/or 6 year data sometime during the first half of 2008.

NASA is plagued by tight funding, Jerry - something not mentioned in the press releases. I'd rather wait an extra year for good data than argue twenty over well intended, best guess releases. NASA scientists, fortunately, are vain creatures obsessed with perfectionism.

Alessandro Melchiorri (University of Rome), the same scientist who first gave the correct date for the 2006 release two weeks in advance, has posted this over at CosmoCoffee:

WMAP5

Should be out "soon" !

http://cosmocoffee.info/viewtopic.php?t=954

Thanks Zahl. As the second poster in the other forum notes, 'soon' for these guys is not always sometime in the next week or two... but it is good to know that someone connected to the process believes it will be released.

Do we know what additional types of science are expected in the five year release?

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Thanks.

Not necessarily in the next week or two, but considering Butterworth's "we expect to release 5-year data before the end of this year" and now Melchiorri's post, it seems that DR3 will be released according to schedule.

Melchiorri elaborated on his earlier post: "the reference comes from a recent talk by Lyman Page. Concerning the 'soon'....it seems that they are writing up the
main papers, so perhaps end of the year ?"

Well these guys are astronomers, after all. Kind of like saying that Antares or Betelgeuse may "soon" go supernova?

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