ANASAC Telecon, April 17, 2014
Participants: Al Wootten, Carol Lonsdale, Dan Marrone, Dick Plambeck, Daniela
Calzetti, John Hibbard, Phil Jewell, John Carpenter, James
Di Francesco, Douglas Scott, Shep Doelmann
1.
NAASC (Jewell)
a) JAO update
- A new group, called "Extension and Optimization of Capabilities (EOC),"
has been formed to lead and increase ALMA's instrumental opportunities.
Anthony Remijan will lead this group, holding the title of Program
Scientist (Extension and Optimization). Catherine Vlahakis will become
Deputy Program Scientist (Extension and Optimization), effective 24 March
2014 for 18 months. Fills in role vacated by Stuartt Corder as he is now
Deputy Director. Tony and Cat will have this role for the next 18 months
- Starting 01 April 2014 ALMA transitioned to a 2+1 weekly cadence, 2 weeks
of ES and 1 week of focused EOC activity.
b) CURRENT PRIORITIES [Week of April 14, 2014]
- Pipeline parallel data comparison
pipeline has met a preliminary pass, expected to be in operation at the
start of Cycle 2
- Data reduction of Cycle 1 data continuing intensely, ~80 EBs delivered
- CASAguides
a recent update in prep for upcoming Synthesis Summer School, some testing
by ANASAC members would be appreciated (already been done in-house), user
feedback would be very helpful
c) ANASAC
F2F Meeting 28 May
annual meeting done in conjunction with NRAO User's Meeting following 2 days.
Agenda items needed. Previous agenda is in the archives. Need to compress
the agenda into one day.
d) People:
- Postdoc offer made to Amanda Kepley, accepted.
2. Program Scientist (Wootten)
a) Cycle 0 science status.
- 110 ALMA papers so far (CV + Cycle 0 + Cycle 1)
- For Cycle 0, 23 papers have been published by NA authors from 41 projects
with delivered data (5 were fillers).
- 17 new entries in available archive data in March.
- NA doing well in this score but no Cycle 1 papers yet?
- hard to determine how well NA is doing vs. all other regions since data
base does not include executive origin of projects
b) ASAC telecon meeting 9 April
- ASAC Report, questionnaire to be sent to community for feedback,
Board has asked JAO for plan for Project Scientist role in Santiago,
either hire someone into that role or distribute the responsibilities
- Board is considering charges for next meeting in Charlottesville
- Board actions in March relating to ASAC
- Concurred with the ASACs designation of Alberto Bolatto and
Tomoharu Oka as the next Chair and EA Deputy Chair, and noted
that the next EU Deputy Chair will be proposed by June 2014.
- Noted that the ASAC contact for the ALMA Development Steering
Committee is now Dick Plambeck.
- Concurred in the NSFs re-appointment of Douglas Scott of the
University of British Columbia and appointment of Rachel Osten, of
the Space Telescope Science Institute to 3-year terms on the ALMA
Science Advisory Committee effective April 2014 and June 2014,
respectively. (Kelsey Johnson is rotating off soon.)
- 9 Apr Presentation
- Stuartt made this presentation to the ASAC
- Gautier gave a short disposition of the Cycle 2 results, NA obtained
117 high-priority projects, oversubscription for Cycle 2 went down due
to larger number of available hours
c) ALMA Development (Wootten)
- ESO Messenger article on ALMA flux calibration, available for the general
reader, Two further articles, for the Memo Series, will follow.
- NA Calls
- Studies have begun.
- Band 1 carrying on, as is Band 5, APP is also coming along well.
- New Projects approved by ALMA Board and they have begun or are in
final stages of contract signoff.
- Band 2 Workshop happened in Arcetri, can Band 2 include Band 3? NA plan for Band 2 Project is 67-94 GHz. IRAM presented plan for cutting-edge SIS receiver for 72-120GHz that will be installed on
PdBI in July. May not satisfy compression specs for solar observing though, putting similar technology into an ALMA Band 3 cartridge may be tricky according to engineers. B23 LNA design noise contributions are dominated by LNA, and no current LNA can cover 67-116 GHz within the ALMA spec, designing/prototyping new LNA design takes ~1 year, NA going ahead with its Project design. EA work on Band1 optics noted a problem getting low frequency beams through the window in the dewar, may be an optics design problem for Band 2. Good workshop and now figuring out what elements from EU, EA work can go into a final design for implementation on the telescope.
3. Science Status (Hibbard, Lonsdale)
a) New CASAguide available for processing Cyc0 data from archive.
Please Test!!
b) Cycle 1 Status Report March 2014
c) Observing Status
- Array is similar to C32-4.
- Antennas at the AOS: 62 (53x12m, 12x7m). Antennas at the OSF: 4.
- Currently in commissioning time (now called EOC). 38 antennas
available for observation (35x12m, 10x7m), This week PWV ~ 0.3-1 mm,
some snow last week
- Cycle 1 observations have completed several additional blocks since
last telecon (Session 30; Session 31 begins April 22).
- HP Projects: 196 total. 107 (55%) with some observations. 58 (30%)
with some data delivered. 28 (14%) completed.
- Tony Remijan (EOC support), Richard Simon (
AoD support) in Chile
d) NA Data Reduction
- 180 EBs processed or being processed in-house;
- 45 NA EBs by JAO. 11 SBs QA2 PASS in last week. Currently: 10 staff
reducing 12 SBs. 12 SBs in queue.
e) NA Data Deliveries
- 91 SBs for 34 projects. 15 NA projects completely delivered.
- 1 Data Reduction visits since last telecon.
- NA doing well compared to other partners
f) Cycle 2 Status
- Notifications out to PIs. Awaiting posting of Cycle 2 projects to
Science Portal by Proposal Handling Team.
- 353 A+B graded projects (117 NA). Oversubscription = 3.9 by project,
4.3 by 12-m time (3.6, 4.1 for NA)
- So far, 3 NA helpdesk tickets complaining about consensus reports,
2 from outside helpdesk (half of Cycle 1), 3/5 about unfair technical
assessments, 2/5 about proposal not being read correctly, some chatter
on ASAC e-mails about bad consensus reports, should reports be better
vetted by the JAO?
- SBs for first batch projects are assigned to
P2G and Contact Scientists
- Will also start transferring uncompleted Cycle 1 projects (awaiting list
from JAO).
- Software for Total Power Observing mode has not passed acceptance. A
non-linearity has come in that we do not know yet how to calibrate out.
Need software for start of Cycle 2. Contingency plans being investigated.
Report from EA expected next week. (120 hours of TP approved in Cycle 1,
46 projects for Cycle 2)
4. Astronomer Outreach (Wootten)
a) Google calendars for ALMA Science and Training events now linked to
from Science Portal (under Helpdesk link)
b)
NAASC TV
c) ALMA Questionnaire distributed shortly after Cycle 2 results mailed to PI.
Asks for feedback on all aspects of ALMA, from proposal process to data
reduction/products.
d) Next
NAASC Workshop. Topic: Assembly of Galaxies. Submissions being
accepted. Please register!
e) NA Regional workshops are planned:
- 2014 AAAS Annual Meeting (13-17 February 2014).
- 180 Minute Symposium: Technological Innovations and Their Impact on
Astronomical Discovery (included P. Jewell on ALMA)
- 180 Minute Symposium: From Dust and Molecules to Planets and Stars
- 90 Minute Symposium: The Evolution of Galaxies in the Early Universe
- 14th Synthesis Imaging School May 13-20, Socorro
- 2014 Summer AAS Meeting: Boston TBD
- International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy ALMA Session at the
69th Meeting - June 16-20, 2014 - Champaign-Urbana, Illinois
- 2014
NAASC Workshop 4-7 Aug 2014 Transformational Science in the ALMA
Era: Multi-Wavelength Studies of Galaxy Evolution. Charlottesville
f) International workshops:
- ALMA Conference 2014. "Revolution in Astronomy with ALMA -- The Third
Year" 2014 December 8 to 11 at Tokyo International Forum near Tokyo
Station
- Proposal for IAU GA Focus session on VLA-ALMA science submitted.
Minutes submitted by James
DiFrancesco and Alberto Bolatto
--
AlWootten - 2014-04-19