On the phone: nikolic osf barkats? laing hills peck remijan liszt emerson hogerhiejde morita t. wilson liu lonsdale

Notes on discussion of Agenda (q.v.)

Note the monthly reports and biweekly reports linked in the schedule. Interferometry at the OSF continues. Fine delay fringe errors fixed but new bugs have come in. single dish continuing, in the context of AIV. One problem--excess az residuals on DV02. A good focussed effort has tracked these to the encoder coupling, now under investigation. Unclear whether this is a problem with design or assembly. PM03 has a lower level of error, an arcsec or one, unresolved. test correlator coming along. another four radiometers delivered, six at site now. first set of tests, at OSF, at a link. BN: generally went well, could not actually test in a working state with interferometry but functional tests went very well. Move of first antenna to high site, PM03, 17 Sept to avoid natl holiday 18 Sept. Goes to pad 106, essentially all ready. More than 16 antennas are on site, ~3-4 of AEM design. Looking forward to holography investigation. DTE: close to having report out. We think we can charaterize reproducible change in antenna shape with T so we can put in a bias to the shape to make the antenna work in an optimal fashion at whatever the best temperature is for the AOS. Report very soon. RH: If that setting is done, then it should be within spec over full range of T. KM: On Melco, right now NAOJ colleagues are doing holography using NRAO receiver. This campaign will be finished early next week. Right now too early to say anything about the results but I have a good feeling from preliminary data. RH: These antennas have had mods to improve thermal performance, visible in photos. BN: PM03 to high site? When does DV01-DV02 interferometry begin? RH: One week before. Charges to ASAC were approved by Board with some embellishments and improvements. ANASAC SEPT 25. other regional meetings shortly afterwards. KM: JSAC on Sept 26.

CSV review. 2-3 Sept. Any discussion. Struggling to get paperwork together. May go our the door Monday of next week. Employment: One offer will be made, more promising candidates. AP: Outreach. IAU meeting, JAO sent an ALMA booth, ESO and NRAO booths already there. Traffic reasonably constant, thanks to all for making this a success. Notebooks were popular.

CASA beta release? KM: ALMA-J team is responsible for sd CASA development. Group is now discussing this with the development group. RH: Documents with suggestions should be circulated among the sci ipt for comment or enhancement? TR: SD materials--getting the data into an MS is needed. AP: Tools underdeveloped, many needs have been identified. RH: Link to right place in CASA materials? Generator location problem. Well affect seeing. Was positioned thinking the wind would carry heat away, but at night it flows down the mountain. Moving would cause delay and difficulty. The effect could be modest but we don't know. At an extreme might have to do tests at high site, not at OSF.

Calibration:

WVRs: No additional information.

Lars preparing implementation plan. eSSR has not met.

DRSP: Klaassen. I have gone through all of them and made them as complete as possible. Sylvia had summarized this into a spreadsheet, different DRSPs needs are there. I will put this info on the ESO website. Send me an email for this spreadsheet until then. RH: My recollection is that we identified missing areas? PK: We had holes in polzn projects. We have one. Another was planetary nebulae. We added one on that. RH: One on polzn is a bit thin.

RH: A topic relevant to polzn. To do calibration of the system, measure all of stokes parameters with astro means, is difficult. Need very good stability, some parameters hard to find. It is proposed to put a polarized source on the top of Chajnantor peak. It would have a harmonic generator to put out signals in most bands if not all, with a grid in front of it which could be rotated. Many people have said this is a good idea, but we need requirements and a design. Please send me comments. This joint project with APEX, which has a transmitter from smithsonian. Would be rehoused and moved higher. Rather than traditional holography we would do interferometry in the way we do astronomical holography, with one dish as a reference and the ALMA system to receive the signal. This may not be as good as the traditional way; it would include the secondary, and the atmosphere paths would be 4km or so. BN: Presumably one could do classical phase retrieval, then path fluctuations less of a problem. RH: could take the data interferometrically and throw away the phases in a hybrid scheme.

AI: Check on scripts to analyze weather data.

Splatalogue has a GUI interface shown on the webpage.

AOB: Register for Cville workshop soon, ~150 now registered.

Band 1 meeting in Manchester coming up. EU interferometry school has 70 students registered, not exclusively a mm school, will include CASA. In Oxford.

-- AlWootten - 2009-08-19
Topic revision: r1 - 2009-08-19, AlWootten
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