Dear All,

Please find attached notes from this week’s meeting courtesy of James (with some light editing from me). Notice in particular the action items at the top of the notes which are:

- Review NAASC_TimeCriticalResponse.pdf and send comments to Tony and ANASAC - Nominate ASAC vice chair candidates to Rachel - Nominate new ASAC members to Al - Check in with co-Chairs for Taiwan meeting logistics (Giles)

Best, Karin

anasac.telecon.071917.txt

ANASAC Telecon (07/18/17)

Attendees: Karin Oberg, Al Wootten, Rachel Osten, Christine Wilson, James Di Francesco, Giles Novak, Stephen White, Tony Remijan

ANASAC task list - Review NAASC_TimeCriticalResponse.pdf to Tony and ANASAC - Nominate ASAC vice chair candidates to Rachel - Nominate new ASAC members to Al - Check in with co-Chairs for Taiwan meeting logistics (Giles)

NOTES:

1. Old Business - Preliminary f2f meeting report. - Remijan prepared a short draft in response to the Time Critical White Paper. Please review at: NAASC_TimeCriticalResponse.pdf. Once approved, it should be passed along to the Authors of the white paper per the agreement made at the ANASAC f2f.

2. NAASC

- Cycle 4 progress update - Last NRAO eNews provides a summary. The 12m array is operating again, in a C40-5 hybrid array; ACA and TP arrays recovered sooner and are providing data. A new schedule for configurations is under study and some roads/antennas still need snow and ice removal for antenna moves to continue to C40-9. - Lots of snow (even in Santiago). Problem is that when snow falls it doesn't go anywhere. A power line was accidentally cut. Observing is continuing and antennas are being (slowly) moved to extended pads after snow has been removed. Will be in C40-7 shortly in a few weeks but not for long and the array will move to C40-8 soon thereafter. A date for this is not known, but maybe 9 August. Data are coming out, but 400h of A-ranked proposals will be carried over to Cycle 5 (though configurations won't match RAs as well). - A problem was reported to ANASAC on that a NA-PI project was declared timed out due to no more scheduled time in the needed configuration (C40-5). Then ALMA begun observing in C40-5, but the project was not resurrected until specifically requested by the PI (a couple of weeks after observations had begun in C40-5). Remijan explained that there had been a mass cleanup of old projects and of projects in the queue that are no longer tenable because they needed C40-6 or more compact with the goal to get partial data to PIs as soon as possible. At the time getting antennas back online and moving to C40-9 was the focus. But then it was suddenly possible to do C40-5 or C40-6 projects so these projects were resurrected. Tony did hear from John, whose project, even though it was treated as NA, was actually flagged as European and so was missed during the resurrection, but this has been fixed. Presently ALMA in a strange hybrid configuration (C40-6/C40-7-like) and data are being collected but some tapering and other manipulation will be needed to reach observational goals. It was Tony's call to clean up the queue and given information known at that time this seemed reasonable. - Management meeting in Garching this week (with Stuartt and Phil Jewell)

- Cycle 5 begins 1 October. Proposal review results expected in ca a week. - APRC comments? No ANASAC members present who were on APRC. Star Formation and Disk panel was somewhat overwhelmed this year, with 100+ proposals for each panel member to evaluate. Large program proposal outcomes were somewhat unclearly evaluated with different panels have differing opinions. Ideas being floated for a different approach next year. - ANASAC needs to select a new ASAC NA vice-chair. There is no written procedure. Karin suggested the following procedure based on what we did a couple of years ago: One person on ASAC/ANASAC (this year Rachel Osten) gets nominations (including self-nominations) and checks with nominees that they are willing to serve before circulating the list for votes by the ANASAC members. The same person should not be the ANASAC chair and the ASAC vice-chair. - Board has asked for nominations for future ASAC membership. They are looking for expertise in star and planet formation and disks. Planet time-domain astronomy also sought. Send Al ideas for nominations. Last time, eight names were sent up to the Board for evaluation.

- Meeting updates: - ASAC Minutes 11 July 2017: ES_notes_July11.txt - ASAC 1-2 October 2017, Kyoto - Make hotel arrangements soon as they are going fast. Kyoto is a very popular place, especially with Chinese tourists, when the leaves change in October. - Long Baseline Workshop, Kyoto 3-5 October 2017 Abstract Deadline 1 August, registration 1 Sep, hotel rooms asap. - 40 people have signed up for now. - Katelyn at NRAO can buy the plane ticket for ASAC members OR members are free to purchase their own and be reimbursed. - ESO workshop on magnetic fields in Garching in October. - ESO workshop to discuss a large-aperture submm telescope in January. - development plan doesn't include this, so it will be supported in-dependently through this workshop - NAASC conference in Taiwan in early February, Tony has no information on deadlines. If logistical support is needed, please let NAASC know sooner than later (i.e., within the next month or so). Giles is on SOC, invitations for speakers have been sent out on July 1. Leslie Looney and Shih-Ping Lai are the co-chairs, and should be contacted about this. Not much pre-registration at the moment but invited speaker list should change that. - Special session on disks accepted for AAAS meeting in Austin in February. Karin Oberg to talk at this, as will David Wilner and Meredith Hughes. Al is thinking of going to it too. - European development study workshop on the future of the OT to be heldin February/March. Idea here is to build a new one from the ground up incorporating new ideas rather than continuing to patch up the current OT. Alan Bridger notes that it's becoming increasingly difficult to make updates to the current OT.

3. ALMA Development - Development update. - Band2+ Project passed PDR on 30 May and its design has been approved by the board. Presentations summarizing the PDR presentations are linked on the meeting agenda. Paper on the archive about the new low-noise amplifier, says there's a noise penalty of 4-5 K for a Band 2+3 receiver. Possible to mitigate this penalty with other components like a silicon lens. A link is given to the Band 2+3 receiver talk also on the agenda. Band 2+3 PDR isn't scheduled until November, won't make it to the Board by then. What the Board will want from ASAC/ANASAC will have to wait maybe until the following April. Unclear how do evaluate Band 2+ vs. Band 2+3 is being discussed at the Management Team meeting this week. Low noise amplifiers can be bought from Sweden and was tested at CDL that has good noise performance but insufficient gain meaning many would need to be added in series. More questions to be answered at the end of November. Building both Band 2+ and Band 2+3? Board only wants one design, not kindly disposed with trying out a bunch of designs. - Correlator upgrades appear ready to go. Would only offer better channelization in the near future, which is important for spectral lines. Also allow us to double our continuum bandwidth, given receiver upgrades (e.g., Band 2+). Other elements between receiver and correlator also need upgrades, and are being currently investigated. Will be funded from ALMA Development funds ($5M / year to NA). - New NA Project Call closed 30 Jan 2017. - New NA Studies Call closed 1 May 2017 - Proposals are being refereed at the present - New Study reports are available. - May not be a project call in a couple of years as funding stream normalizes. - Futures III meeting in Berkeley coming up, will be focused on NGVLA - Right after eclipse, URSI meeting in Montreal will have several ALMA presentations

4. Organizational items

- Next call will be September 12 or thereabouts. Rachel suggests a Doodle poll given people's teaching schedules.

- Tony asks that the message be taken to the community that the weather-related shutdown was an extreme event and though the observatory has been dealing with it there are issues of safety that need to be taken under consideration and which lengthen the recovery time. They are doing the best that they can and ask patience from the community as they literally "dig themselves out."

- Karin asks anyone to share notes with her to summarize this meeting.

- Rachel to send out reminder for nominations to the ASAC position.

-- AlWootten - 2017-08-08
Topic revision: r1 - 2017-08-08, AlWootten
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