Minutes for ANASAC Telecon January 17, 2013 11 AM PST Version 2

Participants
John Carpenter Al Wootten Carol Lonsdale Dick Plambeck Alberto Bolatto James Di Francesco Rachel Osten Daniela Calzetti Shep Doeleman Karin Oberg Ciska Kemper Kesley Johnson

Agenda web page and materials
https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/ALMA/17Jan13Agenda

1) Construction status (Al Wootten): - very little has happened with CSV since November due to problems with the power supply - power supply failing 2.5x / week; only had 1 turbine running to support all power; problems have been varied; problems starting the other two turbines, commissioning has falling a little behind due to these problems - 51 antennas at the high site, latest EU antenna delivery possibly delayed today due to snow - last optical pointing telescope tested in Tucson, nutator delivered - AOS roads all fine - last FE shipping out from European integration center right now - correlator was recently accepted - Band 10 observations achieved in November (from OSF) - Residence last item for construction, may begin this year, won't be done until 2015 - Cycle 1 SBs are will be run through a data reduction pipeline. The new version installed this week in Santiago will automatically detect when a block is run and run it through pipeline. - Cycle 1 is scheduled to begin to 23rd, moved ahead to Monday, weather is deteriorating - Operations will close in February, work will be done then on many things, eg., on power supply - meeting on solar ALMA currently ending in Glasgow, development meeting is coming up, Oxford is planning a Band 11 workshop in March. 200 people pre-registered for NAASC meeting - Cycle 1 will begin in a hybrid configuration (configurations 3 and 4 in the call) since that is where the antennas are now.

2) Operations (Al/Carol) - Cycle 1 news on Science Portal - Cycle 0 is done. Data are being worked on so that all scientifically interesting data are delivered to PI. For scheduling blocks where >50% of data has been taken, the data will be reduced through QA2 and delivered to the PI. If < 50% is taken, then data will also be delivered, but there will be no QA2 assessment. - going through to account for all data to make sure nothing is left out - Alberto asked about the availability of the archive. Go to Science Portal and click under "Data". The archive still needs a query tool and request handler. The current web page gives info on all subobservations and need to check them all to get the data; not the best way to get the data and will be changed eventually. Go to the archive and send comments if you have any.

3) ASAC charges (John Carpenter) - see agenda for actual items - Preliminary plans for Cycle 2: - call for proposals issued July 25 - Deadline September 5 - proposal review 3rd week of November in NA (not Chile) - Cycle 1 observations will continue through January 2014, with normal Feb 2014 shutdown - This represents a slip in the start of cycle 2 compared to previous plans. The slip is caused by the need to finish construction, delays from weather and power, construction money will carry through this year but not longer, key people will depart thereafter - ASAC will like to hear the plans for future cycles. - John Carpenter's indicated that he is fine with this plan, and that construction has to take priority. No one on the ANASAC telecon expressed any concerns with this plan.

NOTE: John Hibbard made the following comment after reviewing the first draft of the minutes. > There has actually been NO slip to the start of cycle2 compared to > previous plans. We never said when Cycle2 would start, precisely b/c we > knew the end of construction was the main priority. The users may have > inferred that cycle2 would start earlier (based on the published end > date for Cycle1 of Oct31 of this year). But that never appeared in our > plan. We did have an internal "pencil" plan that had Cycle2 starting in > Jan 2014, but that was never a date we were working to (being so busy with > Cycle0 and Cycle1 when that date was penciled in).

- The Cycle 2 capabilities under discussion include: - 40 12-m antennas with 2 km baselines - full ACA available (but no nutators for continuum) - band 9 total power on the ACA will not be offered - band 4/8 expected to be available for second half of cycle 2 - four spws per baseband in correlator available - (single-pointing) polarization and longer baselines (3 km) possibly offered if they can be demonstrated before the CfP - no limitations on numbers of science goals, but the same limitations on the number of sources per science goal - Is it wise to have band 4/8 available only halfway through? Why not wait until Cycle 3? Some pressure from Japan for these to be available. Some B4/B8 in FEs already, future integrations will be at the OSF as regional integration centers have shut down, OSF integrations have not been proven yet...some risk? - ASAC F2F meeting next month will discuss large/legacy projects. Alberto asked when projects time-shared between regions will be accepted; there is no implementation plan yet. - Board agreed that abstracts should be published; expect a proposal for this to occur very soon - The Too/DDT web site will work as on March 1. A special version of OT will appear with a special queue through which DDT proposals for these proposals will be submitted. They will go to a special directors' council, and is separated to prevent confusion with Cycle 2 proposals. ToO proposals are already ranked, but need a tip from the PI to enact. For DDT, ~5% of the time is available for such unique projects. - Project Tracker will be available again on March 1 as well on the Science Portal

4) NAASC during Early Science (Carol) - hiring another postdoc, really excellent applications, interviews coming up soon - Jennifer Donovan Meyer from SUNY recently joined the NAASC - ALMA data reduction workshop scheduled for end of February - AAS meeting had a splinter and special session. About 150 people attended the special session with recent ALMA results. The splinter session had ~30 people in a workshop setting to learn about CASA and the OT. Good response for both of those. - Four invited at AAS special session, and 4 additional contributed talks. No special ALMA poster session; at least two ALMA posters were placed in normal poster sessions. Not all abstract have been searched so unclear how many ALMA posters there were. - CS's for Cycle 0 have been contacting PIs with updates on data delivery progress - PIs of 12 Cycle 1 projects are being contacted for Phase 2 for "Batch 1" science obs to start next Monday (not next Wednesday); will not include ACA projects - John C. asked if there was a schedule for configurations throughout the year to handle the high-ranked projects. A detailed or definite schedule is not available. The current plan is to go into the extended config in June when the weather is best. The project still needs to analyze the requirements of all ~180 projects - John Hibbard, Gerald Schieven, Harvey Liszt, Mark Rawlings, and Richard Simon are in Chile at the moment learning about Phase 2 bootcamp for Cycle 1. They will train NAASC staff on latest software. - Pipeline will look at improving heuristics for flagging bad spectral windows - NAASC will be putting together a set of webinars for those who can't made data reduction workshops.

5) Development Workshop (Al) - will be held before ASAC in Japan, February 14 (evening of February 13 in NA) - 1 day meeting only; a videocon will be available for those that cannot attend. - Unfortunately the workshop coincides with AUI Board meeting, and hence limited representation but some phone-ins, - Al will be the only NRAO member present due to travel restrictions at NRAO to save on travel costs - Workshop Agenda: - overview of how things stand by Lewis Ball - Al will discuss how NA studies are proceeding; expect some of the studies to conclude by the end of the summer - plan to have a call for new development projects sometime in spring with proposals due in June - Al will provide update on science rankings last developed in 2010; list was distributed last fall at ANASAC F2F meeting - NA presentations will be in the morning, EA presentations in afternoon, and EU presentations thereafter - need to get our project pipeline going; this will be coordinated by the ALMA Development Selection Committee (ADSC) - need to outline in more detail the methods by which projects are called for as per the request from the ANASAC - A downselect for Band 1 technologies is presently ongoing - Alberto Bolatto reported that the ADSC met twice only last year, and no further meetings have been scheduled. It would be useful to have another meeting before the February development workshop.

6) Other business - next telecon February 21st, meetings expected to be third Thursday every month at 2 pm EST. - Dick Plambeck expressed concern about when money for student support is provided to PI's. The plan is to deliver the money after ALMA data given to you. If Cycle 1 extends through next January, may be hard to depend on money that many not arrive for over a year. Carol notes that it's hard to provide money beforehand since all data are being collected in a best-effort basis. Al and Carol will check on the current policies.

Submitted by John Carpenter, ANASAC Chair 18 Jan 2013

-- AlWootten - 2013-02-15
Topic revision: r1 - 2013-02-15, AlWootten
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