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Contact Information

  • 2006-5-17 14:30 UT
  • Duration: 1 hr
  • USA Toll Free Number: 877-874-1919
  • Toll Number: +1-203-320-9891
  • Passcode: 185064
  • Leader: Al Wootten

Topics

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

The AOS TB  Shell Arises The AOS TB Shell is in place. NSF approval has been secured for finish work during the coming austral winter.

  1. New Business--Project news/updates (Wootten, Wilson, Kawabe)
    • New photo gallery of construction events in Chile
    • Risk Register
    • Science IPT Quarterly Report Q1 2006
    • ASAC Meeting - The ASAC has received a response to their Report from the Board, along with new charges. Several items require action by the Science IPT.
    • Science Requirements -- The revised document is located in the DAR area and should be reconsidered by the CCB (which approved it once) shortly.
    • Characterization -- Characterization has ended and we move toward atmospheric monitoring for observations. The first stage is at the OSF. See Calibration discussion.
  2. JAO Project Scientist Turno now in effect, Wilson in place, transitioning to Kawabe during this month.
  3. Current Science IPT Schedule. The graph shows the schedule at the beginning of 2006; clicking on it brings up a pdf of the current schedule. A major difference is the new dates for PSI/first fringes, now moved to March 2007. (Click for more accurate tabular form (same as last month))

    <img src="http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/schedule.jpg" alt="Jan06 Science IPT Schedule"

    1. 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 -
    2. Submillimeter Frequency Protection.
      • AR has prepared a revised document that addresses many of the points in the above description and brings to light some new issues. The Revised document (FreqProtection_4_19_06.pdf) still has several issues inside it that need discussion and should be ongoing over the next several months. The first two issues that were resolved at the last meeting were 1) The list of molecules and 2) to what level does each species need to be explained in its astronomical importance. From the discussion at the last meeting, AR believes the list of molecules that need frequency protection (located in Section 4 of the revised document) is now complete and that about a paragraph is needed to explain the astronomical significance of each species. AR also took specific justifications of species directly from ALMA Science Advisory Committee documents. In addition, comments, suggestions and edits on any part of the document can be made via an Evaluation Form written in MS Word. Please send these suggestions via a completed evaluation form to mailto:aremijan@nrao.edu.
      • Also an effort in the IAU, meeting in Pague August 18 11:00-12:30 Ohishi will make some presentations. If ALMA has a significant amount of input it would probably swamp anyone else. Funnel that into WG10. ITU radioastronomy follows that. NO allocations above 275 GHz, will be addressed WARC 2010 or 2012.
      • CloudSat was launched and will begin downward radar after 30 May 2006.
    3. Astronomer Outreach: NRAO Newsletter ESO Newsletter. NRAO ALMA Calendar
    4. ARCs.
      • A dizcussion of the Eu/NA/JP ARC plans was held at the Large Molecules meeting in Denmark, which went well.
      • Chris Carilli has been appointed as the Head of the ALMA Science Center (NAASC) effective May 1, 2006. Chris will initially take up the role from Socorro before relocating to Charlottesville later this year. Chris is no stranger to ALMA being a member of both the ASAC and ANASAC. This is a very formative time for the North American ALMA Science Center and we look forward to Chris' involvement and leadership. - K. Y. Lo, Director of NRAO
      • ESO has selected Dr. Paola Andreani as the ARC Manager for ESO. Dr.Andreani will begin work at ESO Garching on 1 June 2006. Dr. Andreani is presently an Associate Astronomer at the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste, a part of INAF. Dr. Andreani is also a Co-I of Herschel/PACS and the local Project Manager of Herschel/SPIRE. She has been a working group manager of the Italian Herschel community, participating in the Herschel GTO process. Dr. Andreani is a well known researcher in the field of extragalactic astronomy, and has carried out significant work on the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect using the SEST. - Tom Wilson, EU Project Scientist
    5. Group Activities (all)
    6. Next meeting is on Jun 28th (14:30 UT)

    Emerson/Laing/Vila-Vilaro -- Instrument Scientists

    Conway, Holdaway -- Configuration Group

    • The Technical specifications and SOW for the IFB for the AOS Road network design have been drafted. E. Donoso has released this to bid. The IFB will contain all the information that ALMA has, like: Surveys, Geotechnical reports, New antenna pad location, Design development report of the previous antenna pad location done by M3, Transporter to infrastructure ICD, ALMA safety, environmental, etc. manuals, documents, etc.
    • New Configuration submitted for approval Wootten presented to ASAC, Board. Still before CCB.
    • Proposed ACA Configuration for comment.
    • ArrayCenter shows photos of the region of the center of the Array, taken this week.

    Jeff Mangum -- Calibration

    • Calibration Group telecon 2006-05-11.
    • Wilson showed the ALMA Board recent data from the prototype Water Vapor Radiometers (WVRs) operating at 183 GHz which were installed on two of the antennas of the Smithsonian Submillimeter Array (SMA) on Mauna Kea. A preliminary analysis was done by the MRAO group and reported by Hills. Despite extremely poor weather (3-4 mm of precipitable water vapor along the line of sight), this data showed excellent agreement (correlation coefficient better than 0.9) between the emission seen by the WVR and the interferometric phase at 230 GHz toward 3C273 moving down at night from ~30 to ~20 degrees elevation on a 200m baseline at 230 GHz. The agreement between WVR and interferometric phase which was shown was superior to that yet demonstrated anywhere.
    • Solar calibration is a subject of some urgency. An example document has been written. See Solar Oberving wiki page.
    • The WVR testing on SMA continues to produce data, and the team is working hard on the analysis. There is a lot of useful information, and many subtle effects, in the data and it will take a time for a full analysis to be made. But in essence the results so far are encouraging. Wootten and Mangum visited the SMA to observe the WVR in action week before last.

    Robert Lucas -- SSR

    • Latest SSR meeting (2006-05-10)
    • Integration in simulation mode was done. ASDM data sets (in some early form ...) have been obtained and written to the Archive, reduced by on-line calibration (testing mostly the technics, not the actual science functionality though).
    • CDR4 is in progress. This yearly review of computing will occur this week by telecons.
    • Current work in Project Data Model update, preparations for holography integration.
    • SSR is having an e-mail discussion on the pipeline input parameters: finality and contents.

    Michiel Hogerheijde -- DRSP

    • Following the upcoming call in the ASAC Report for expanding DRSP to include Bands 4, 5 and 8, and ACA, I am starting to set up what I call DRSP 2.0. An outline has been circulated by e-mail to the Science IPT, and everyone's comments are welcome. I hope to get this going in the next few weeks by approaching volunteers to serve as science-theme leaders, and a call for projects in June (deadline sometime in August). DRSP 2.0 should be completed before the end of the year.

    Robert Laing -- Commissioning and Science Verification

    • AIVSVC face-to-face meeting, Santiago July 19-20
    • Update of Commissioning and science verification plan needed, to include ACA, for ASAC Charge.

    Mark Holdaway/Steve Myers, Reid -- Imaging

    L.-A. Nyman -- Site Characterization

    • AIV: WEATHER STATION at OSF (needed for antenna testing). Science has planned to provide a weather station for antenna testing, with requirements as given in SCID-90.05.13.00-001-A-SPIE. The Specs are being drafted. The CR4 wet mirror hygrometer, which meets the requirements, was removed from the NA site characterization container (NASCC) by Radford, Nyman and Donoso for recalibration and redployment to the OSF. It is identical to the instrument currently installed at the ATF and to the four planned for deployment around Chajnantor. In the early Fall 2006 it will be redeployed to Chile and installed at the OSF. At the EU site characterization trailer is a Davis weather station, which includes an anememometer; Nyman will check on that and we plan on redeploying that to the OSF also. At Chajnantor, local weather will be monitored by the station at APEX in the meantime, as ALMA no longer does site characterization. At the OSF, the Davis device data is sufficient for holography but the CR4 device data will be needed for optical pointing.
    • On 2006 April 28, Radford, Nyman and DonosoCesar Ocampo visited the NA Site Characterization container and reported it apparently working. The stepper motor on the tipper had apparently failed. Radford planned to revisit the container during the following week and to recover data collected since 2005 September. Nyman plans to assess all tipping data.

    Science Corner:

    Complex Molecules in Space: present status and prospects with ALMA May 8 to 11, 2006, Fuglsoecentret, near Aarhus, Denmark. Wootten talk at Imaging and Calibration page, linked at top.

    Calendar

    Official JAO Calendar New!!

    ALMA Events of Interest

    (see also Al's ALMA Biweekly Calendar)

    2006
     
     
     
     
     
    Day Date Time Event location details
    May15-16
    All Day
    ALMA Ops Group meeting
    CV
     
    We
    May17
    1430UT
    ALMA Sci IPT Telecon
    Telecon
     
    Thurs
    25 May
    11amEDT?
    ALMA Board
    Telecon
    TBD
    May17
    1430UT
    ALMA Sci IPT Telecon
    Telecon
     
    Tues-Weds
    June 13-14
    all day
    ALMA Board Meeting
    Santiago
    TBD
    Jun19-20
    all day
    ALMA AIV CSV Meeting
    Santiago
     
    We
    Jun 28
    1430UT
    ALMA Sci IPT Telecon
    Telecon
     
    Thurs-Fri
    9-10 November 2006
    all day
    ALMA Board Meeting
    Madrid
    TBD

    Upcoming Meetings

    Complex Molecules in Space: present status and prospects with ALMA May 8 to 11, 2006, Fuglsoecentret, near Aarhus, Denmark

    MAKING THE MOST OF THE GREAT OBSERVATORIES May 22-24, 2006 Pasadena, CA

    SPIE 24-31 May, Orlando, Florida

    ALMA Special SessionAAS/CASCA 4-8 June, Calgary

    Coalition for National Science Funding Hill Exhibition 7 June, Rayburn House Office Building, Washington

    61st OSU International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy, June 19-23, 2006, Columbus Ohio USA

    The fate of gas in galaxies July 12-14, 2006 ASTRON, Dwingeloo,

    IAU XXVI General Assembly Prague, 14-25 August 2006 *Sessions of Particular ALMA Interest*

    Science with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) II November 13-16; Madrid, Spain

    Astrophysical Masers and their Environments 2007 March 12-16, Alice Springs, Australia

    50th anniversary of the founding of NRAO Delayed NRAO wishes to remain 49 a bit longer...; Charlottesville, Virginia

    See also NAASC listing

    -- AlWootten - 11 May 2006
Topic revision: r7 - 2010-08-03, ToddHunter
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