Science IPT 17 August 2005 Notes
Attendees:
Remijan, Wootten, Lucas, Richer, Kawabe, Shige, Wilson, Morita, Hills, Emerson, Mangum,
Holdaway
News: Vertex Kickoff meeting occurred--first antenna due 22 Jaunary 2007, Second Nov 2007.
CoC Meets 16 Sept Brussels, if info complete, then Council 28-29 Sept to discuss going
ahead with antennas. Finance Committee recommended Vertex on basis of meeting specifications
and lost cost.
JP antennas will be delivered to NAOJ June-Jul 2007, 4th Oct 2007.
EU B5 enhancement contract in hand.
AOS contract signed. Construction to begin about 1 September of foundation and shell.
Rebaselined ALMA documents to be presented to Board 8 September for discussion by
project, ASAC, and others. These will be reviewed at the ALMA Cost Review, to occur in
Munich 13-15 October. Recommendations from the Cost Review panel will be important to
further development of the project.
Topics: Subarrays--a requirements document is being developed.
Nutator--a requirements document is essentially finished, technical specs now
under draft.
RF Membrane--science requirements were never established and are being developed.
See wiki discussion, including useful summary of issues by Hills.
This is doable but diffictult-- one option is that one can use the steel
shutter, with a spring which snaps shut if power fails--Hills.
Requirement to place on antenna people.
Correlator + TFB Early Science Modes-Originally the plan was to implement only
modes which were available on the single baseline correlator at the ATF on the
ALMA correlator in Chile. However, the tunable filter bank will almost certainly
be implemented on the Chilean correlator, though not at the ATF. Therefore we
need to define modes which we would like to have available both for testing and
for observing in the early phases of Chilean operations. Please see text and links
on the agenda page.
# Next meeting is on Sept 14th (14:00 UT)
Science IPT leaders are discussing rebaseling options, working with ASAC, and discussing
the Cost Review. At this time, the Science budget has been divided into science requirements/
technical comment phases, which we are now in, and the commissioning phase, which accompanies
Assembly, Integration, Verification and Commissioning in Chile.
A directory of Science IPT members will be available shortly.
Emerson reported on the SRR Review. Report under construction on the 26-27 July meeting.
No serious inconsistencies, but some requirements while generally
known seem to be not written down. Biggest risk is LO phse stability including LLC.
Probably OK but not yet proven. About 90 action items defined. Some small, some
large. All IPTs submitted a worry list of most worrying items. This was discussed
(77 items) in detail; most had been covered already. Sloser SEI-Sci contact
suggested, working group to be set up. WG will follow up on AI list. The SRR
will be repeated Nov-Dec including attention given to data reduction, EMI, etc.
Wootten reported on the Configuration. Conway, iterating with the team in Chile,
produced a new design. All 151 pads in the compact configuration are staked and will
form the basis for construction of a few pads later in the year. Design of the extended
array will be delayed, to be developed in concert with design of the road and fiber
network, taking into consideration Environmental Impact and the Vizcacha avoidance
zones.
Morita reported that the draft ACA Configuration is nearly complete. Design compact
spiral concept. Will be placed in a site to be available soon, reviewed with the
ACA System in November.
Wootten reported on the Calibration Group.
# Calibration Specs and Reqs document is currently under review.
# An Amplitude Calibration Review will be held 25 August in Grenoble, with Mangum as
panel Chair. Some documents are available on edm.alma.cl
Draft relative amplitude calibration device recommendation document complete.
Plan to submit following relative amplitude calibration device review in late
August 2005.
# At the 2005-08-11 Calibration Group telecon Group discussed draft "calibration examples".
This was an action item from the SRR review. Assignments have been made.
See the Calibration Examples Wiki for details, link in agenda.
Lucas reported on the SSR meeting last week
# The new Japanese members/subsystem scientists are: Toshihiro Handa(obs.Prep.,
Scheduling), Munetake Momose (ACA, Tel.Cal.), Masatoshi Ohishi (Pipeline, Off-Line)
# Debra Shepherd will progressively move her focus to coordination of software
commissioning at the ATF (she continues as Offline subsystem scientist however).
Starts January.
# SSR to include optical pointing as an observing mode
Will be useful at ATF and in commissioning.
# SSR and Use Cases document being updated for ACA.
# Face to Face Meeting in Charlottesville next fall (2005-11-20/21)
There were no reports from Michiel Hogerheijde on the DRSP.
There were no reports from Robert Laing on Commissioning and Science Verification
There were no reports from Mark Holdaway/Steve Myers on Imaging
Wootten presented a report from Otarola on the Site Campaign just concluded. All
goals were successfully met, as detailed on the agenda page.
Wootten noted the link to the JAO Calendar, and to a recent paper by Combes on ALMA and
Cosmology.
Respectfully submitted,
Al
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AlWootten - 17 Aug 2005