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Contact Information

  • 2007-8-15 14:30 UT Please check your local time; it may have changed!
  • Duration: 1 hr
  • USA Toll Free Number: 877-874-1919
  • Toll Number: +1-203-320-9891
  • Passcode: 185064
  • Leader: Al Wootten
  • Attendees: Michiel Hogerheijde, Chris Wilson, Alison Peck, Crystal Brogan, Tony Remijan, Jeff Mangum, Anotnio Hales, Rob Reid, Al Wootten, Remy Indebetouw

Topics

  1. Old Business The enhanced Agenda from last meeting is available. Science IPT notes from last month's telecon are in the agenda in blue.

OSF Warehouse View The OSF Technical Facility warehouse is approaching completion. See other images and animations. See other images.

  1. New Business--Project news/updates (Wootten, Testi, Morita)
  2. Standard documents
  3. Current Science IPT Schedule. Current Operations Schedule. Schematic IPS. (2007 July 13)
  4. Directories

Science IPT Group Activity Reports

Please include your Group Activity Report here (How to Enter Your Report), or email it to AlWootten

Project Scientists

  1. Science IPT -
    • Planning ATF, OSF and AOS.
    • Change Control Board items
    • ATF: As per discussions with Emerson the current schedule is below. Please let Al and Debra know if anyone has any issues with this.
2007
 
Day Event
August 13-20
Emerson: Radiometric pointing

  1. Astronomer Outreach: NRAO Newsletter New ESO, New NRAO Newsletter NAOJ News. NRAO ALMA Calendar
  2. ARC News.
  3. Group Activities (all)
  4. Next meeting is on September 19th (14:30 UT). October 17th for the following month.

Emerson/Laing/Vila-Vilaro -- Instrument Scientists

Conway, Holdaway -- Configuration Group

  • The Technical specifications and SOW for the IFB for the AOS Road network design have been completed. A design for road and fiber network at the high site is to be bid for construction shortly. Design of the extended array is complete; bids for antenna pad construction are out.
  • Final configuration design. We continue to assess performance (see imaging, below). Tony will set up an independent group to assess configuration performance.
  • New <4km Configuration submitted for approval Passed CCB.
  • Proposed ACA Configuration approved.
  • ArrayCenter shows photos of the region of the center of the Array.

Jeff Mangum -- Calibration

  • Semi-transparent Vane Report has been received.
  • Pointing Design document now drafted.
  • Calibration Plan: Current version of the calibration plan and associated documents ("examples", "roadmaps", "matrices", etc.) posted. Comments welcome.
  • Calibration Examples: The "meat" of the Calibration Plan. Review of these documents nearly complete, some need updates.
  • Ancillary Calibration Devices: Documents which describe the weather station and temperature profile technical specifications have been developed. Initial purchase documentation for (P,T,RH,Ws,Wdir) measurement devices sent to Robert Laing. NOTE: I need suggested vendors for the temperature profiler.

Robert Lucas -- SSR

  • Latest SSR meeting (2007-05-09); June meeting cancelled due to time conflict with Computing Leads meeting; no July meeting while group leader recharges his batteries.
  • Critical Design Review 5 occurred in May. Generally successful. See ASAC Charge.
  • Computing IPT subsystem leads met in Socorro last month.
    • New ATF 'csar' Jeff Kern, leads a team dedicated to 24/7 ATF support (but some effort diverted from development).
    • Integration/testing of Single Dish in July/Aug at ATF
    • Integration/testing of interferometry starting also : September; continued until ATF stops.
    • Many implementation details discussed and clarified.
  • WVR software meeting in Grenoble currently (TelCal)
  • ASDM changes being implemented/integrated. Freezout intended for end of year.

Michiel Hogerheijde -- DRSP

  • All DRSP2.0 projects have been reviewed, and responses of the authors have been collected. The findings were discussed at the ESAC and ASAC face-to-face meetings in April and May, and are summarized below.
    • Out of 149 projects from 53 authors, 42 were revised w.r.t. DRSP 1.0; 18 are entirely new; and the reminder (85) was either unchanged or no response was received (but still reviewed).
    • The distribution over science areas has not changed much.
    • Integration times were tweaked here and there, but the main uncertainty lies in including realistic overheads.
    • Quite a few projects requested cross-correlation of the 7m ACA antennas with the baseline-ALMA 12m antennas. While for some projects this is indeed essential, for most this was used only to increase the sensitivity. In terms of scheduling and operations this may be undesirable, and this needs to be reflected in the DRSP to make sure the 7m*12m is not 'overbooked'. *H
    • Once the final DRSP 2.0 projects with the authors' response included and reasoned 7m*12m requests included are added to the web site, the password protection on the latter will be removed. The details of the DRSP 2.0 will also be entered into a spreadsheet.
    • OT is almost ready to try deriving observing modes and overheads using DRSP 2.0 projects.
  • Hogerheijde presentation on DRSP2.0 to the ASAC

Robert Laing -- Commissioning and Science Verification

Mark Holdaway/Steve Myers, Reid -- Imaging

  • CASA Simulator Report
    • Dirty beam images have been made for all of the ALMA configurations, for both snapshots and 4h exposures at a variety of declinations.
    • Preliminary CASA simulation examples
    • Bojan Nikolic will be evaluating the CASA simulator for testing an atmospheric phase model the Cambridge group is developing.

  • Pointing selfcalibration for mosaics

L.-A. Nyman -- Site Characterization

  • The weather station 50-100m north of the APEX antenna was removed to the OSF. Its mounting pole was also removed.
  • The battery bank ESO2 now supplying power at the AOS will be moved to the guardhouse at the intersection of CH23 and the ALMA Road. Ulf Kaberger to implement; presumed done now but no confirmation has been received.

Remijan, Markwick-Kemper -- ALMA Working Group on Spectral Line Frequencies

  • Splatalogue.net is still the home for Splatalogue but see below for the test version we are working on here at NRAO.
  • F. Lovas joined us July 2 to help add/edit content to Splatalogue. Aided by programmer William Cassidy.
  • Updates to Splatalogue from July 1, 2007 include:
    • Added 229,221 new/updated lines from Frank's own list. Of that, 12,332 lines (or an addition of ~2000 lines) were added to the Lovas/NIST Recommended Rest Frequencies of known astronomical transitions. To these added lines, we have run diagnostics on the 4 lists for overlaps on transitions, frequencies, formulae and chemical names and have come up with a common way to display and designate each individual species. We have eliminated errors from the Lovas/NIST list. To date, NRAO has the most accurate and complete database for radio/mm/submm astronomical spectroscopy.
    • Search Filters have been added that will eliminate transitions of atmospheric and "potential" astronomical molecules from being displayed. Search filters are also planned that will allow the user to display they type of line strength (Aij, Sij, Sijmu^2, AstIntensity?, JPL/CDMS intensity) or energy (K, cm^-1) preferred, what list they want displayed, as well as upper limits to the errors on transitions. As such, we are working on a new "face" for Splatalogue. Please check out The "New Splatalogue" (currently internal only) and comment on the form and functionality displayed. NOTE: while the functionality may be displayed, it may NOT be active yet!
    • Lovas/Remijan have flagged transitions of the known interstellar molecules and their isomers as representative of the NRAO Recommended Rest Frequency. This is will be the default display returned from a query so only 1 frequency will be displayed from the known astronomical molecule list.
    • Additional fields have been added so it is clear from each transition whether the listed frequency and error is measured (lab data) or calculated (bootstrapped from measured lines). Also, each molecule/(some transitions) has a reference as to where the numbers came from. These were added from the JPL/CDMS sites as well as from Lovas'/Remijan's own library.
    • Frank De Lucia from The Ohio State University contacted Remijan and is expected to post his laboratory data from OSU on Splatalogue as to effectively disseminate it for public use. In addition, Remijan and Markwick-Kemper are going to propose to Herschel for funding for the ongoing maintenance and additions to Splatalogue in anticipation of Herschel and ALMA.
    • The alpha release of Splatalogue was in Feb 2007. We are expecting a "beta" release of all the new functionality, as well as some new surprises, by Dec 2007. Remijan will present the "New Splatalogue" to the ANASAC on Aug 17th and Remijan and Markwick -Kemper will give a "world-wide tour" of Splatalogue next year. The first unofficial stop is in the Fall to the NHSC. Plans have yet to be made yet, however.
    • Resolved issue: With the database currently at ~4 million records and the anticipation of the single dish archive also using the databases at NRAO, the NAASC, E2E and Computing divisions HAVE APPROVED purchasing a dedicated database server so NRAO can continue to house/update the Splatalogue database.

Science Corner:

Talks from the recent Disks Conference in Charlottesville: Transformational Science with ALMA: Through Disks to Stars and Planets

Calendar

Official JAO Calendar

ALMA Events of Interest

(see also Al's ALMA Biweekly Calendar)
2007
 
 
 
 
 
Day Date Time Event location details
WeTh
Jun 27-28
all day
ALMA Board Meeting
f2f
Santiago
We
Jul 11
1430UT
ASAC
Telecon
 
We
Jul 18
1430UT
ALMA Sci IPT Telecon
Telecon
 
We
Aug 1
1430UT
ASAC
Telecon
 
We
Aug 15
1430UT
ALMA Sci IPT Telecon
Telecon
 
 
Sep 10-12
all day
Director's Review of ALMA
f2f
Satniago
We
Sep 19
1430UT
ALMA Sci IPT Telecon
Telecon
 
 
Sep 24
all day
B6/B3 CDR
f2f
Cville
TuWe
Oct 30-31
all day
ALMA Board Meeting
f2f
Santiago
Mo
Nov 5
all day
ALMA Peoduction Review
f2f
Santiago

Upcoming Meetings

North American URSI meeting July 22-26, Ottawa; Emerson, Reid attending.

ALMA Community Meeting and the Workshop on Surveys for ALMA 3-6 Sept, Garching. Testi, Laing attending, perhaps others.

Astrophysics in the Next Decade: JWST and Concurrent Facilities September 24-27, 2007, Tucson Arizona Wootten, Testi, Brogan attending.

See also NAASC listing

-- AlWootten - 13 Aug 2007
Topic revision: r8 - 2010-08-03, ToddHunter
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