ALMA North American Science Advisory Committee

Contact Information for those calling in.

• Call date: 2012-07-18 02:00 pm EDT or 18:00 UT (Thursday)
• Duration: 1 hr
  * USA Number: 1-866-600-8836
• Outside USA Number: +1 203 480 8549
• Passcode: 3283890#
• Leaders: R. Osten (D. Calzetta), A. Wootten, C. Lonsdale

• Attendees:

Topics

1. Old Business The enhanced Agenda from last meeting is available. Minutes from that meeting are available.
   • Adopt the Minutes?
   • Please vote on a New Time Slot DOODLE HERE!!
2. New Business under Discussion.

Discussion Items

1. Fall Face to Face meeting 20-21 Sept, Charlottesville.
   • Logistics page for participants
2. NRAO Budget issues
3. Reports
   1. Construction Status
      • Science section of June Report, from R. Hills.
      • 62 antennas at the ALMA site (25 NA, 16 EA, 21 EU)
      • 43 antennas accepted (22 NA, 13 EA, 8 EU) – 41 through AIV
      • 35 antennas at the AOS (17 NA, 9 EA, 7 EU)
      • AOS Roads: All 67km completed
      • 50 Front Ends delivered.
      • Correlator Quadrant 4 arrived at the AOS on May 25. to be installed and ready in September
   2. Operations
      • Science Operations contribution to June ALMA Board report
      • Early Science Progress
        • List of highest ranked projects
        • As of July19, 192 (48%) of 400 SBs nominally completed (still need to pass QA2); 118 (30%) passed QA2; 116 delivered to PIs. 13 (34%) of 38 NA projects have some data delivered. 5 (13%) NA projects finished.
        • ARC-based data reduction started in early April. NA has processed 27 datasets; 13 being processed. Will be renewed focus going forward (need ~6 SBs being processed in-house each week for rest of Cycle 0)
        • Project Tracker was deployed at end of June. Visible to PI's (and coIs?) of ALMA projects (including cycle 1) after logging in. Lists status of all SBs submitted to the archive. Documentation available at http://almasw.hq.eso.org/almasw/pub/OBOPS/ProjectTracker/ProjectTrackerManual.pdf (linked at top of first page before staring the application)
        • What information on ALMA do you feel you are not getting? Please give us a top five and we'll fashion a FAQ. ( Action Item )
      • Cycle 1 Lookahead
        • Proposal deadline was July 12 1300UT. Server went down 20min before deadline, resulting in deadline being extended 1hr to 1400UT (noon EDT). Preliminary report indicates hardware failure (but under review). Emergency protocols using specially designed call-out procedures kicked in immediately, with notices being posted on SP, helpdesk & webpages within ~5min (NRAO also tweeted). Decision to extend deadline made within 10min. All users who reported problems subsequently were able to get proposals resubmit within ~5min of original deadline.
        • Total number received ~1135 after duplications (but still being confirmed). See SP news item. Very close to the 1200 estimated from NoIs. ARCs handled total of 262 help desk tickets (~7/day in 4 weeks prior to deadline; 30/day during last week). See histogram attached to bottom of agenda. 42 KB articles published.
        • Action Item: Feedback How did the proposal process go for you please?
        • Proposal Review Oct 1-5; 77 Science Assessors in 11 panels. Results to PIs November; observations expected to start after completion of Cycle 0 (Jan 2013); 800 12-m Array hours to be scheduled; up to 800hrs for ACA.
   3. NAASC during Early Science
      • People
        • Offer accepted for CSV PS: S. Corder will move to Chile in August.
        • Expecting R. Simon in July, M. Rawlings 21 Aug.
        • Sabbatical visitors Looney and Martini expected to arrive at NAASC soon.
      • What is happening at the NAASC?
      • Meetings upcoming with ALMA or NAASC-related components (see below)
        • Special Sessions proposal for AAS Jan 2013 (Long Beach, CA)
   4. ALMA Development (Wootten)
      • EA PM visited Taipei to participate in the B1 kick-off meeting with his NAOJ colleagues. Many colleagues of NRAO, HIA, University of Chile and KASI (observer) attended to this meeting.
      • NA Development studies announced in June 5 NRAO eNews article
      • The preparations for Band 5 receiver production are making good progress. A final draft SoW has been prepared and is currently being reviewed. Several meetings were held to review and agree technical and programmatic interfaces between CCA and LO.
4. ASAC activities (ASAC members)
   • 13 June telecon. There will be a telecon 18 July.
5. Astronomer Outreach (Lonsdale, Wootten)
   • NAASC ALMA-related workshop(s) in 2012-3 (see below)
6. Date of next telecon
   • 16 Aug 2012
7. Other Business
8. Outreach ALMA on NBC Rock Center
9. Astronomer Outreach: JAO ALMA Webpages; ALMA Newsletters; ARC-maintained wiki of ALMA science meetings and training events; NRAO eNews; NAOJ News.

Science Corner

1. More ALMA SV data papers have appeared:
   • The First ALMA view of IRAS 16293-2422: Direct detection of infall onto source B and high-resolution kinematics of source A Pineda et al.
   • ALMA observations of the outflow from the Source I in the Orion-KL region Zapata et al.

Events of Interest

Upcoming, very recent, or ongoing Meetings

• ALMA Science Meetings
• ALMA Training Events

1. 2012
   • Synthesis Imaging Workshop May 29 - June 5.
   • AAS No 220
     • June 14, 2:00-3:30pm Special Session.SS05.ALMA Early Science Results & Opportunities
   • 67th OSU International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy
   • The Early Phase of Star Formation
   • USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting will be held the week of July 8-14, 2012, in Chicago, Illinois
   • IAU Beijing
   • Molecular Emission at High Redshift Comes of Age 14-15 Sept, NRAO Charlottesville
   • "Molecular Spectroscopy in the Era of Far-IR Astronomy Workshop" Oct 28-31 2012, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia
   • New Trends in Radio Astronomy in the ALMA Era - The 30th Anniversary of Nobeyama Radio Observatory 3 December - 8 December 2012; The Prince Hotel, Hakone, Japan
   • Pan-Executive ALMA "First results" workshop in Chile: 12-15 Dec 2012. SOC, LOC orgainized and working.Working group: L. Testi, A. Wootten, M. Saito.
   • Joint workshop with ASIAA. Short Title: "2013 Rocks!" Long Title: "Transformational Science with ALMA: the Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems" in Hawaii, April 2013; SOC formed.
   • Exploring the Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems: Victoria, B. C., 2 June 2013 - Friday, 7 June 2013
   • Protostars and Planets VI: Heidelberg; 15 July 2013 - Saturday, 20 July 2013

• Plateau from Honar:
  

• Science Section of June report, from R. Hills: Science_-_June_2012.pdf