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Contact Information

* 2009-6-17 14:30 UT
* Note: C. Wilson points out line noise may be muted by pressing *6 which works thru the call center.
* Duration: 1 hr
* USA Toll Free Number: 877-874-1919
* Toll Number: +1-203-320-9891
* Passcode: 185064
* Leader: Hills, Wootten, Testi, Morita
* Attendees: i

Topics

1 Old Business The enhanced Agenda from last meeting is available. Science IPT notes from last month's telecon are not available.

Dynamic OSF Fringes

As reported in the last meeting, on 30 April, the first two ALMA antennas were pointed at an astronomical source, Mars, and "static" fringes were observed - i.e. software did not control or follow the changes in the fringes as the source followed its diurnal path. Updated ALMA software (v6.1) has now been installed. On 12 June "dynamic" fringes were obtained, for which computations are continually updated to drive the electronics and track the changes in the fringes as the source treks on its daily route across the sky. In this case, the spectral lines from the silicon monoxide (SiO) maser in the heart of the Orion Molecular Cloud were observed at 86 GHz. The team included Jeff Kern and Robert Lucas with strong support from all the AIV and Commissioning staff at the site. In the Figure, the single antenna spectra are shown in the upper panel, from the AIV2 and AIV1 antennas. The spectrum on the 69.7m baseline between the two antennas is shown in the lower left panel, phase on the lower right.

See other images and animations. See other images.

  1. New Business--Project news/updates.(Hills, Peck)
    1. R. Hills ALMA Status Report June 2009
      • System: The achievement of 'dynamic' fringes is another important step forward. There are significant issues remaining unresolved from the single-dish testing, including offset pointing, thermal deformations, focus settings and, more generally, reliability.
      • Site: Antenna stations for early experiments are nearing completion. Some problems are being encountered with the ground conditions in the outer parts of the array. Some modifications are necessary. There is some increase in the sidelobe levels, see note by Sawada-san.
      • Antennas: Elements of more than 15 antennas are at the OSF.
      • ASAC Matters. Next f2f meeting in Garching in October.
    2. Review (mostly internal) of Commissioning Plans Early Sept OSF; R. Wilson Chair
    3. Commissioning Scientists. Search status
    4. Revised Standard ALMA Description (approved)
      Standard ALMA Description
      “The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.”
      Approved May 7th, 2009, Effective May 2009
    5. Project_Plan_III_May_2009.pdf: ALMA Project Plan III May 2009
    6. ALMA Science IPT wiki page
    7. Astronomer Outreach: New JAO ALMA Webpages. JAONews. ESO Newsletter No 16 NRAO eNews ALMA News. NAOJ News. NRAO ALMA Calendar
    8. Current ALMA System Block Diagram Vers P.
  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. Science IPT
    • Topic for technical discussion. When to update the focus. See Control_of_Antenna_Focus_and_Related_Topics.pdf and Follow-up discussion.
    • We need to do an update on the Scientific Specifications. Here Specifications Revision is a presentation Hills made to ASAC about this. We need to discuss operational efficiency.
    • New issues that have come up include slow recovery of the switches in the IF system and the amount of non-linearity in the front-ends, which will have an effect on calibration.
    • ALMA Development. A set of possible development items was presented to the RadioMillimeterSubmillimeter Program Prioritization Panel in Pasadena. No powerpoint was presented there but a presentation is available.
    • OSF (Peck)
  2. Next meeting is on Jul 15th (14:30 UT). Aug 19th for the following month.

Richard Hills, Alison Peck, Robert Laing -- Commissioning and Science Verification

  • Commissioning and Science Verification Review, OSF, 2009 September 2-3. Bob Wilson, review Chair.
  • ALMA SciOps Implementation Plan Review, SCO 2009 September 28-29. Helou, Karoji, Booth, panel members.

Jeff Mangum -- Calibration

  • A Calibration Meeting was held.
  • Early operation of the weather station on holography tower No 2. Continue to verify measurements by comparison with NAOJ weather station.
  • ACD5 and ACD6 passed PAI and are cleared for shipment.

Bojan Nikolic/John Richer -- WVRs

  • As people are probably aware, the work in Cambridge on phase corrections/WVRs is funded through an European Union Framework Programme 6 grant. European Union recently held a mid-term review of the whole ALMA enhancement under FP6, including the phase correction, and have informed that the review was passed.

  • Two(?) WVRs at the site. One WVRs unit is undergoing detailed lab tests at Onsala.

Lars-Äke Nyman -- eSSR

  • Science Operations Requirements Review, June 1-2, 2009, in Santiago

Testi, Leurini-- Design Reference Science Plan

Wootten -- Site Characterization

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

Science Corner:

  1. arXiv:0906.1375 Title: Planet Shadows in Protoplanetary Disks. II: Observable Signatures Authors: Hannah Jang-Condell Comments: 26 pages, 10 figures. To appear in ApJ. Full resolution preprints available. Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
  2. arXiv:0906.0584 Title: Chemical Modelling of Young Stellar Objects, I. Method and Benchmarks Authors: Simon Bruderer (ETH Zurich), Steven D. Doty (Denison University), Arnold O. Benz (ETH Zurich) Comments: Accepted by ApJS. 24 pages, 15 figures. A version with higher resolution images is available. Online data available. Second paper of this series of papers available at arXiv:0906.0588 Subjects: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
  3. arXiv:0905.3625 Title: The Horsehead nebula, a template source for interstellar physics and chemistry Authors: Maryvonne Gerin (LERMA), Jérôme Pety (IRAM), Javier R. Goicoechea Journal-ref: Submillimeter Astrophysics and Technology : A Symposium Honoring Thomas G. Phillips, PAsadena : \'Etats-Unis d'Am\'erique (2009) Subjects: Galaxy Astrophysics (astro-ph.GA)

Calendar

Events of Interest

(see also Al's ALMA Biweekly Calendar)

2009
 
 
 
 
 
Day Date Time Event location details
 
Jun 1-2
 
Sci Ops Obs Prep meeting
SCO
 
 
Jun 22-25
 
CIPT Review 7
SCO
 
 
Jun 17
 
Sci IPT
telecon
 
 
Jun 24
 
ALMA Board Telecon
 
 
 
 
 
Sci Requirements meeting?
SCO
 
 
Jul 15
 
Sci IPT
telecon
 
 
Aug 19
 
Sci IPT
telecon
 
 
Sep 2-3
 
CSV Review
OSF
 
 
Oct 13-14
 
ASAC f2f
ESO Garching
 
 
Nov 16
 
ALMA AAER
 

Upcoming Meetings

Millimeter and Submillimeter Astronomy at High Angular Resolution June 8-12, Taipei, Taiwan.

Mass Assembly and Star Formation History of Galaxies Sep 21-24, Charlottesville, Virginia

From circumstellar disks to planetary systems Nov 3-6 Garching

-- AlWootten - 2009-06-15
Topic attachments
I Attachment Action Size Date Who Comment
Project_Plan_III_May_2009.pdfpdf Project_Plan_III_May_2009.pdf manage 398 K 2009-06-15 - 15:45 AlWootten ALMA Project Plan III May 2009
Topic revision: r5 - 2010-08-02, ToddHunter
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