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* 2009-12-16 15:30 UT
Note UT time unchanged. Summer time only in Chile now.
* Note: C. Wilson points out line noise may be muted by pressing *6 which works thru the call center.
* Duration: 1 hr
* Toll Number: NEW; Old number cancelled 1-203-480-8549
* USA Toll Free Number: NEW; Old number cancelled 866-600-8836
* Passcode: NEW; Old number cancelled 3283890
* Leader: Hills, Wootten, Testi, Morita
* Attendees:

Topics

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

Three antennas at dawn at the AOS Thanksgiving morning.

Three antennas at the AOS last week. Image courtesy J. Stoke, J. Hellerman.

See other images and animations.

  1. New Business--Project news/updates.(Hills, Peck)
    1. R. Hills
      1. A detailed status report may be found in ALMA Monthly Reports
      2. Brief status report.
      3. As announced, Interferometry has begun at the AOS and this has now been extended to all the receiver bands available so far. On the night of November 21, first fringes at Band 9 were achieved with the DV01-PM03 interferometer at the AOS. Observations of the water vapor maser spectral line in the evolved star VY CMa at 658 GHz were made in good (0.8 mm PWV) conditions on a 160 metre baseline (fringe spacing 0.6 arc seconds). It was a 300 second observation, single polarization observation.
      4. Three antennas are operating at the AOS after the 20 Nov ascent of DV02. Two antennas are at the OSF being outfitted for interferometry there by mid-January. R7.0 computing integration and testing is under way. Erection continues on antennas in all vendor camps; the first ACA 7m is a recent addition to those standing at attention.
      5. Antennas are now being operated from the Control Room at the OSF Technical Facility.
    2. Employment
    3. ALMA Science IPT wiki page
    4. Astronomer Outreach: ALMA News. JAO ALMA Webpages. JAONews. NRAO eNews ESO Newsletter No 16 NAOJ News. NRAO ALMA Calendar
    5. Current ALMA System Block Diagram Vers P.
    • Current IPS attached
  2. 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. Parametric cuts. In order to recharge project contingency we have been asked to identify parametric cuts to the budget, difficult in a budget which is 85% salaries.
  2. Change Requests. A revised change request for B6 has been submitted: Band 6 CRE. This is complicated but in summary it proposes that the noise temperature requirements should apply over the 5 to 10 GHz IF range requested but that a higher slope in the power output should be allowed over the range 5 to 6 GHz than 6 to 10 GHz. The spec only applies to the cold cartridge so the problem of added WCA noise is not addressed directly but that ought to be covered by the specs on the WCA so long as the IF band is defined as 5 to 10 GHz. Unfortunately front-end have given themselves an escape clause by proposing to remove the requirement that the noise temperature at all points in the IF band should be no more than 25% worse than the average across the band.
  3. Configuration change. New configuration files from Sawada are attached and will be incorporated into the CASA simulator in the imminent release.
  4. Development. As part of the NA proposal to fund ALMA Operations we are required to submit a Strawman development program which meets the guidance funding and which might be completed in the 2012-2015 years. Staging of the development is limited by the guidance amounts for available funds. In this strawman plan for NA only we have included early implementation of the two additional subarrays which will prove helpful during commissioning, when some antennas will not have a complete complement of receivers and subarrays of antennas may prove useful for verification. All science committees ranked high resolution high sensitivity imaging as provided by a very long baseline capability highly; therefore this activity begins early in the period and is complete by its end. New receiver bands are expensive and labor-intensive, and so in this strawman the highly ranked 7mm band effort begin early and ramps up until in 2015 a half dozen receivers are available. Development for upgrades for the 3mm and 1.3mm cartridges and development for deep submillimeter efforts continues through the period. By 2015 ALMA will be a mature instrument, and it is judged that at that time its datarate should begin augmentation, an effort beginning the final year covered in this strawman plan. This plan is illustrative of what might be accomplished but is in no way an approved plan.
  5. Operations Plan Version E. Meetings of the SciOps group continue aiming at producing VerE in February. Various scenarios for streamlining costs were proposed. One which might be discussed is 'What would the science impact be if ALMA were to move through a subset, say five, of its 28+ configurations?' Considerable savings in transporter crews might be made.

Jeff Mangum -- Calibration

  • Temporary weather station readout here.
  • Procurement of a temperature profiler for ALMA based on radiometric sounding of the O2 lines under way.

Bojan Nikolic/John Richer -- WVRs

  • Version 7 of the software, being rolled out now, should accommodate writing of WVR data.
  • Significant quantity of test data consisting of interferometric path measurement and 2 WVRs collected by the commissioning teams during November. Early analysis looks encouraging. This figure shows the correlation between the fluctuations of the interferometric path and the fluctuations of the difference in the outputs of channel 3 of the two WVRs
    o2009 11 18T03-pdtcorr-c-ch3.png

Lars-Ake Nyman -- eSSR

  • ALMA Ops Plan version E discussion was held at SCO early December, 2009.

Wootten -- Site Characterization

  • Originally, plans called for a shelter near the center of the array, adjacent to pad 71. The cost of such a shelter is high; a plan is being developed to only deploy enclosed containers at this site and to transfer data to the AOS TB from there.
  • Weather stations have been installed on the AOS TB roof; link above. Purchase of the oxygen line thermal profiling system is under way.
  • APEX Weather Station link.
  • Mitsubishi Site Erection Facility weather station.

Remijan, Markwick -- Splatalogue

  • Please see attached report, which provides details on two recent events:
    • There was a meeting on VO compliance.
    • At the SingleDish CASA Workshop 7-11 Dec, it was agreed that a subset including all the detected astronomical transitions as well as all the recommended rest frequencies of all known astronomical molecules will be provided to CASA and OT.
  • Updates and edits continue on the internal Splatalogue website. Splatalogue Internal Testing Version

Science Corner:

  1. The dusty, albeit ultraviolet bright infancy of galaxies 'Despite their considerable emission at short wavelengths, we anticipate that the counterparts of the brightest UV galaxies will be detected by future sub-millimetre facilities like ALMA.'
  2. Fitting and Comparison of Models of Radio Spectra
  3. Extragalactic millimeter-wave sources in South Pole Telescope survey data: source counts, catalog, and statistics for an 87 square-degree field

Discussion of Band 1 frequency range: transmission curves, spectral lines, and LO considerations

Material was added to the agenda in last month's meeting relevant to this discussion, q. v.

Calendar

  1. Next meeting is on Jan 20th (14:30 UT). Feb 17th 2010 for the following month.

Events of Interest

(see also Al's ALMA Biweekly Calendar)

2009/10
 
 
 
 
 
 
Day
Date
Time
Event
location
details
 
 
Dec 16
 
Sci IPT
telecon
 
 
 
Jan 18-21
 
Ops WG
Meeting
SCO
 
 
Jan 20
 
Sci IPT
telecon
 
 
 
Feb 17
 
Sci IPT
telecon
 
 

Upcoming Meetings

AAS 215, Washington 3-7 Jan, DC 'The largest astronomy meeting ever held.'

Astrobio 2010 13-15 Jan, Santiago

ESO Workshop on "The Origin and Fate of the Sun: Evolution of Solar-mass Stars Observed with High Angular Resolution", Garching, Germany, 2-5 March, 2010.

Astrobiology Science Conference 2010 April 26-29, 2010 League City, Texas

Synthesis Imaging School, June 8-15, Socorro.

ALMA-Herschel meeting November 17-19, ESO

Recent Meetings (presentations online)

From circumstellar disks to planetary systems Garching, 3-6 November 2009 talks online.

-- AlWootten - 2009-12-15

Topic attachments
I Attachment Action Size Date Who Comment
1_page_Gantt_charts_Status_Update_09Oct16.pdfpdf 1_page_Gantt_charts_Status_Update_09Oct16.pdf manage 354 K 2009-12-16 - 10:49 AlWootten  
SpLineGroupRpt16Dec09.txttxt SpLineGroupRpt16Dec09.txt manage 1 K 2009-12-16 - 09:58 AlWootten Spectral Line Group Report
almaconfigsOct09.tartar almaconfigsOct09.tar manage 120 K 2009-12-15 - 18:02 AlWootten ALMA configuration files Oct 2009
o2009_11_18T03-pdtcorr-c-ch3.pngpng o2009_11_18T03-pdtcorr-c-ch3.png manage 17 K 2009-12-16 - 03:09 BojanNikolic  
Topic revision: r7 - 2010-08-02, ToddHunter
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