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Contact Information

  • 2007-4-18 14:30 UT Please check your local time; it may have changed!
  • Duration: 1 hr
  • USA Toll Free Number: 877-874-1919
  • Toll Number: +1-203-320-9891
  • Passcode: 185064
  • Leader: Al Wootten
  • Attendees:

Topics

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

OSF Tijerales The OSF Technical Facility is under roof! Here, the Pachamama blesses the site. See other images and animations.

  1. New Business--Project news/updates (Wootten, Laing, Morita)
  2. Standard documents
  3. JAO Project Scientist Turno now in effect transitioned to Wootten.
  4. Current Science IPT Schedule. Current Operations Schedule.
  5. 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 -
2007
 
Day Event
16-20 Apr
OPT validation on AEC antenna; VxRSI holo acceptance?. Emerson, Peck, Wootten, Laing
April
Holography, OPT acceptance is still pending software fixes mostly.

    • Face-to-face Board meeting Tokyo items. Face-to-face ASAC meeting 7-8 May, Tokyo.
  1. Astronomer Outreach: NRAO Newsletter ESO Newsletter NAOJNews. NRAO ALMA Calendar
  2. ARCs.
  3. Group Activities (all)
  4. Next meeting is on May 16th (14:30 UT). June 20th for the following month.

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 contracted. A contractor will be on the site 7 August to begin design. A design for road and fiber network at the high site is expected in September. Design of the extended array should be complete during the upcoming month.
  • Final configuration design. We will need to assess performance. Tony will set up an independent group to assess configuration performance.
  • New Configuration submitted for approval Passed CCB.
  • Proposed ACA Configuration approved.
  • ArrayCenter shows photos of the region of the center of the Array.

Jeff Mangum -- Calibration

  • Pointing Design document now under manufacture.
  • Calibration Plan: Current version of the calibration plan and associated documents ("examples", "roadmaps", "matrices", etc.) posted. Comments welcome.
  • Calibration Examples: The "meat" of the Calibration Plan. Review of these documents nearly complete.
  • Ancillary Calibration Devices: Documents which describe the weather station and temperature profile technical specifications have been developed. Initial purchase documentation for (P,T,RH,Ws,Wdir) measurement devices sent to Robert Laing. NOTE: I need suggested vendors for the temperature profiler.

Robert Lucas -- SSR

  • Latest SSR meeting (2007-04-11)
  • Off Line Software (CASA) tests occured 5-9 March in Socorro. Final report prepared be Debra Shepherd: http://almasw.hq.eso.org/almasw/pub/Usertests/WebHome/Offline.Test5.Report.mar07.final.pdf.
  • Development of Single Dish Total Power is now the main focus. First meeting in Edinburgh Feb 15/20. Final meeting is next week in Socorro, finalization the following week.
  • Final checks of Holography at ATF are currently limited by some hardware problems.
  • Current testing of Optical Pointing at ATF in progress.
  • Preparation of Critical Design Review 5, and planning for R5 and R5.1 keep subsystem leads busy...
  • A meeting of Software subsystem leads is scheduled in June in Socorro.

Michiel Hogerheijde -- DRSP

  • All DRSP2.0 projects have now been reviewed and response of the authors is requested by Friday April 20. On April 17 a preliminary analysis was discussed by ESAC. The main conclusions were
    • Out of 149 projects from 53 authors, 42 were revised w.r.t. DRSP 1.0; 18 are entirely new; and the reminder (85) was either unchanged or no response was received (but still reviewed).
    • The distribution over science areas has not changed much.
    • Integration times were tweaked here and there, but the main uncertainty lies in including realistic overheads.
    • Quite a few projects requested cross-correlation of the 7m ACA antennas with the baseline-ALMA 12m antennas. While for some projects this is indeed essential, for most this was used only to increase the sensitivity. In terms of scheduling and operations this may be undesirable, and this needs to be reflected in the DRSP to make sure the 7m*12m is not 'overbooked'. How do we want to do the bookkeeping on the 7m*12m requests?
    • Details of the DRSP 2.0 still need to be entered into a spreadsheet, and a tally will be made of requested bandwidths / spectral resolution settings for later translation into correlator modes. OT is almost ready to try this out using DRSP 2.0 projects.

Once the response of the authors is in, the DRSP2.0 will go on-line without password protection.

Robert Laing -- Commissioning and Science Verification

Mark Holdaway/Steve Myers, Reid -- Imaging

  • CASA Simulator Report
  • Solar Observing

L.-A. Nyman -- Site Characterization

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

  • Splatalogue.net became active this week after setting up the database in Manchester and putting out some fires with the database (i.e. server crashing, etc.)
  • AJMK and TR now both have access to the Splatalogue database in Manchester.
  • The database mirror has been set up at NRAO-CV.
  • AJMK is working on the ~200 edits sent by TR for resolving the QNs in the database.

Science Corner:

Papers in astro-ph recently from the Madrid ALMA Conference:
  1. 0704.2286 ALMA : Fourier phase analysis made possible Authors: F. Levrier, E. Falgarone, F. Viallefond
  2. 0702385 Molecular data and radiative transfer tools for ALMA Authors: Floris van der Tak (SRON Groningen), Michiel Hogerheijde (Leiden Observatory)
  3. 0702121 Dense molecular gas in a sample of LIRGs and ULIRGs: The low-redshift connection to the huge high-redshift starbursts and AGNs Authors: J. Gracia-Carpio (1), S. Garcia-Burillo (1), P. Planesas (1) ((1) OAN, Madrid, Spain)
  4. 0701894 Molecular absorptions in high-z objects Authors: F. Combes (LERMA, Obs-Paris)
  5. 0701693 The H$_{2}$ density within spiral and irregular galaxies at high redshift: estimating CO detection limits Authors: Mercedes Mollá, Eduardo Hardy, 'Angeles I. Díaz

Calendar

Official JAO Calendar New!!

ALMA Events of Interest

(see also Al's ALMA Biweekly Calendar)

2006
 
 
 
 
 
Day Date Time Event location details
We
Feb 21
1430UT
ALMA Sci IPT Telecon
Telecon
 
TuWe
Feb 27-8
all day
International Review of Ops Plan
Washington
 
Thu
Mar 1
all day
Review of NAASC Plan
Washington
 
Wed
Mar 7
1430UT
ASAC Telecon
Telecon
 
ThuSun
Mar 9-12
all day
JAO/IPT Meeting
Chile
 
We
Mar 21
1430UT
ALMA Sci IPT Telecon
Telecon
 
We
Apr 18
1430UT
ALMA Sci IPT Telecon
Telecon
 

Upcoming Meetings

Asian Radio Astronomy Winter School January 22-26, 2007 National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan

OBSERVING PLANETARY SYSTEMS March 5-8, Santiago

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

Astronomical Spectroscopy and the Virtual Observatory March 21-23, Villafranca del Castillo, Villanueva de la Cañada, close to Madrid

Frontiers of Astrophysics, a Celebration of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's 50th Anniversary, June 18-21, 2007, Charlottesville.

Transformational Science with ALMA: Through Disks to Stars and Planets June 22-24, 2007, Cville

North American URSI meeting July 22-26, Ottawa

Astrophysics in the Next Decade: JWST and Concurrent Facilities. September 24-27, 2007, Tucson Arizona

See also NAASC listing

-- AlWootten - 12 Apr 2007
Topic revision: r10 - 2010-08-03, ToddHunter
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