Contact Information

• 2006-4-19 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.

1. New Business--Project news/updates (Wootten, Wilson, Kawabe)
   • New photo gallery of construction events in Chile
   • AMAC, ALMA Board meetings in Kyoto Risk Register
   • Science IPT Earned Value Analysis: We continue to look good.
     • Parametric Cuts to enhance contingency (NA only)
     • Science IPT Quarterly Report Q1 2006
   • ASAC Meeting - The ASAC has presented their report to the Board. The Board response is expected at their telecon of 27 April.
   • 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. New Faces
   • C. Brogan has joined NAASC in Charlottesville.
3. JAO Project Scientist Turno now in effect, Wilson in place.

4. 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 November 2006. (Click for more accurate tabular form)

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

   1. Directories
      • Science IPT Directory All contributors to ALMA Science IPT (Sept05)
      • ALMA Directory ALMA Directory v3.0

   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 -
      • ASAC Report, ALMA Reviews
      • SRR items.
        • Specifications for the quarter wave plate have been drafted by C. Brogan.
        • Restrictions on the tunability of the LO lasers suggest we may only perform fast switching between B3 (and parts of B2 and B4) and Bx. For instance, fast switching between B9 and B7 will not be possible. Objections?
   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.
   3. Astronomer Outreach: NRAO Newsletter ESO Newsletter. NRAO ALMA Calendar
   4. ARCs.
      • An internal review of the NAASC staffing plan was held, which went well.
      • In the US, there has been activity on the part of ALMA, in coordination with other instruments, to try to stimulate support for Laboratory Meaurements associated with spectroscopic observations. A recent conference on this subject has been held, resulting in a White Paper to NASA. Tom Phillips writes: "It is becoming ever clearer as Herschel, SOFIA and ALMA come closer to reality, that there is a serious lack of knowledge in the area of line frequencies and other parameters for astrophysical molecules, especially in the range about 0.5 - 2 THz. We face the situation that a typical HIFI line survey may have most of the detected lines unidentified. To some degree the same applies to ALMA." This has been discussed extensively in the US (see White Paper to US Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics for comment.
   5. Group Activities (all)
   6. Next meeting is on May 17th (14:30 UT)

   Emerson/Laing/Vila-Vilaro -- Instrument Scientists

   • Nutator DAR Entry # 194 Technical Specification For the Design and Manufacturing of the ALMA NUTATOR AND SUBREFLECTOR Doc Number: ALMA-35.03.00.00-002-A-SPE
   • System Requirements Review followup scheduled 24-25 April, Garching
   • PSI at the AOC: Move to ATF now in August, fringes possibly in November.
   • Meeting up a meeting on WVRs 2-3-4 October?

   Conway, Holdaway -- Configuration Group

   • The Technical specifications and SOW for the IFB for the AOS Road network design are being drafted. E. Donoso plans to release this bid this week and receive the bids by the end of this month. 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 2006-04-13.
   • 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 should be written. With the Solar Filter in, there will be no use of the WVR, of any other band (no fast switching) and there will be no use of the amplitude calibration device. This is urgent. See Solar Oberving wiki page.

   Robert Lucas -- SSR

   • Latest SSR meeting (2006-04-12)
   • Integrated user tests: Optical pointing tests completed and report available. A spot check of highest priority fixes is being done this week on the Vertex antenna.
   • Off-Line data reduction User Test 4 has concluded. Test report is being finalized.
   • Integration in simulation mode is in progress. ASDM data sets (in some early form ...) are being obtained and written to the Archive.
   • Preparing CDR4. this yearly review of computing will occur next month by telecons.

   Michiel Hogerheijde -- DRSP

   • ASAC Report to call for expanding DRSP to include Bands 4, 5 and 8, also ACA.

   Robert Laing -- Commissioning and Science Verification

   • AIVSVC face-to-face meeting, perhaps...
   • 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). Who's responsible for it? 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 plan is to redeploy the CR4 wet mirror hygrometer, which meets the requirements, from the NA site characterization container (NASCC) to the OSF. In the past, this device sent an email to Charlottesville very day with a report on its health through the satellite telephone at the NASCC. The satellite connection has been turned off since last summer (~June 05). It is identical to the instrument currently installed at the ATF and to the four planned for deployment around Chajnantor. The NASCC device needs to be recalibrated. Nyman is checking on that this week. At some point in the next two months we will remove it, ship it back to the USA for recalibration. 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.
   • At 1120 yesterday morning Lascar erupted again. Pictures courtesy of Cesar Ocampo and T. Beasley.
   • On 2006 April 20, Cesar Ocampo visited the NA Site Characterization container and reported it apparently working.

   Science Corner:

   From F. Combes zmachines talk: An L* galaxy at z=2
   Ziurys has shown a SgrB2(N) spectrum at the American Chemical Society meeting in Atlanta last week, obtained with an ALMA prepreproduction B6 front end on the SMT. This system achieved 107 K system temperature, SSB at 45 deg. elevation at 232 GHz, with > 20 db image rejection, good baselines.
   AR presented his work on the detection of large organic molecules with interferometers and the impact high resolution mapping has on constraining formation models of large organics at the ACS meeting in Atlanta on 3/26/06. His PPT presentation can be found here.

   Calendar

   Official JAO Calendar New!!

   ALMA Events of Interest

   (see also Al's ALMA Biweekly Calendar)

   2006
   Day	Date	Time	Event	location	details
   Thurs	Feb 23	1500UT	ALMA Board telecon	Telephone
   Weds-Fri	22-24 March	all day	ALMA Board Meeting	Japan	TBD
   Weds	5 Apr	1:30 pm EDT	NAASC	Telecon
   Mon-Tues	24-5 April	all day	ALMA SRR Followup Meeting	Garching	CV-230
   Thurs	27 April	11amEDT?	ALMA Board	Telecon	TBD
   Fri	28 April	2pm EDT	ANASAC	Telecon	TBD
   Tues-Weds	13-14 June 2006	all day	ALMA Board Meeting	Santiago	TBD
   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*
   • Astronomical Facilities of the Next Decade Prague 16-17 August
   • IAU SYMPOSIUM No. 235: EVOLUTION OF GALAXIES ACROSS THE HUBBLE TIME Prague 14 - 17 August 2006
   • IAU SYMPOSIUM No. 237: TRIGGERED STAR FORMATION IN A TURBULENT ISM Prague 14 - 18 August 2006
   • The Universe at z>6 Prague 17-18 August
   • Division X meetings. On Observatories: 1600 on 18 August
   • New Cosmology Results from Spitzer Prague 22 - 23 August
   • There will be an ALMA booth near ESO and NRAO displays.
   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 - 05 Apr 2006 rev. 17 Apr