MINUTES ANASAC 02/18/2011

Present: Al Wootten, Carol Lonsdale, Alberto Bolatto, Andrew Baker, David Neufeld, Mike Mumma, John Carpenter, Davil Wilner, Leslie Looney, Doug Johnstone, Debbie Padgett, Neal Evans, Rachel Osten Hsien Shang, maybe others

1) Report on ALMA progress at Chile (Wootten)

Terrible weather at the site, rain and ice. Settled the last few days. Polarization team on site. Discovered problems with swapped correlator outputs, etc. Observations last night look good. Work in progress. By the end of the polarization campaign expect to have polarization capability. Moved to a new computer release for operating software, needed a lot of observation script rewriting. ES call still scheduled for end of March, but 4-6 weeks lost due to weather. DV01 will return to high site after refurbishment, on extended baseline. Expecting in April central array pads will be ready. Designs for ES array proposed, still being evaluated with 105m baselines, still working on the 250m average baseline array. Science verification call went well, circulated in AAS meeting, NRAO newsletter. Designing schedule block to look at TW Hydra, and for a NGC3256. More blocks to come. European antenna surface being worked on, as well as pointing. DV12 fully accepted (first one!). Discussion of NSF budget proposal. Full funding for NAASC operations accepted at the guideline level. Congratulations to the NAASC.

2) Update on OT testing (Lonsdale)

Mostly it went smoothly. Relatively small hiccup with load test, bug found and fixed. Some feedback from people who participated.

3) Update on NAASC operations (Lonsdale)

Two postdoc jobs. Kimberly Scott to join in Sept, second offer out. Good shortlist. CVS postdoc interviews to start. Most of activity related to IT3 and outreach.

4) Update on ALMA community days (Lonsdale)

Efforts led by Kartik Sheth. Resounding success on proposals. Scheduled 9 events. First one in Honolulu. Philadelphia, Pasadena, Baltimore, Boston, Gainesville, Iowa City, Tucson, New York. More tutorials in C'ville. More in Canada (Toronto, etc). Transitioning to data reduction workshops after ES proposals.

5) Call for ALMA development proposals (Wootten)

Still under development (submitted to NSF and major partners, drafting management plan after NSF request). Workshop set for March 21-22 in auditorium. 40 participants currently registered, although heavily weighted toward local participation. Goal is to develop better understanding of what the community wants from NRAO and how NRAO should interface with the community. It was noted that the time line is very tight, and that the ANASAC would have liked to be involved/informed of the decision.

6) Letter to NSF (Bolatto)

Letter from ANASAC is still being considered. Note statement about ALMA not funding observing proposals in MREFC budget page 20. Suggestion by Neal: collect statistic about PI plans for funding the data processing and interpretation of successful observing proposals. Specifically, part of the proposal stage 2 (after proposal accepted) is to say what support you have (and need) for data analysis and interpretation. This would allow us to address the suggestion that this support will come from existing NSF and NASA grants.

Discussion about perhaps engaging the bigger community into this. Maybe something to discuss at a future ALMA workshop?

7) Brief report on visit to Chile (Bolatto)

Attended ALMA workshop at Calan, with good community participation. Attended Chile community day at ALMA building, with presentations by Louis Ball and other people. Important discussions in the Chilean community about how the Chilean time will be awarded, and how the Chilean data will be accessed given that there is no ARC in Chile. Likely result is that they will heavily rely on the NAASC given proximity, hour zone, language considerations. Plans to embed Chilean participants in the NAASC are in the works. It is important to make sure there are no negative impacts on the NA community.

8) ASAC activities (Johnstone, Baker)

March 1st meeting in Santiago. Still no charges. Will pass news onto ANASAC as they become available. Focus will likely be the readiness review.

9) Next ALMA workshop (Bolatto)

Four topics proposed. Mike Mumma made the point that time is short. Discussion about the future workshop to be carried forward through email.

-- AlWootten - 2011-04-21
Topic revision: r1 - 2011-04-21, AlWootten
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