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Contact Information

  • 2007-12-19 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: Reid, Brogan, Wootten, Testi, Emerson, Hills, Remijan, Lars, Peck, Hales, Mangum, Richer, Hunter, Lucas, Hogerheijde, Morita, Myers, Hibbard, C. Wilson

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. See status report attachment please for additional photos.

VertexRSINo2 The VertexRSI antenna number two is under assembly in the Site Erection Facility 2007 November 29. Parts for Antenna number 3 are in port. See other images and animations. See other images.
  1. New Business--Project news/updates (Hills, Peck)
  2. Current Science IPT Schedule. Current Operations Schedule. very high level summary Schematic IPS. (2007 Novemer 30)
  3. 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 -
    • Change Control Board items (Hills):
      • Cross-polarization specifications (No 173): CRE reportedly accepted, though CCB notes are not yet available. See note from Hills at the edm discussion, which is linked.
      • Hot and Ambient Load requirements (No 183): Please see discussion on edm.
      • RF membrane: Recent investigations have confirmed that the loss in performance caused by the Goretex membrane is much higher than had apparently been expected. The problem is that with a thickness of half a millimetre and a refractive index of ~1.14 there are peaks in the reflection at ~133, 400, 666GHz, etc. Most of this reflection is terminated on ambient temperature sources in the "widget" space in front of the receiver. For bands 2, 3 and 4 where the noise temperatures are expected to be low, the loss of sensitivity may be as high as 7%. Hills is working with Ricardo Finger on investigations of alternative materials. Much more on this topic can be found at RF Membrane Wiki.
    • ATF: On 2007 Nov 30 a milestone was reached at the ALMA Test Facility. Interferomety under control of ALMA software was improved to the point that interferometric determination of the baseline between the two antennas and pointing will become possible. Kudos to the correlator team J. Pisano, R. Amestica, J. Perez, and D. Guo and to J. Kern, R. Hills, A. Peck, D. Emerson, A. Hales, J. Meadows and R. Ridgeway for their efforts on the hardware, the software and the synthesis of the system despite heavy clouds and rain.(Peck)
      • Summary
      • Goals: (1) Get software working (2) Training personnel and developing procedures
      • Priorities:
        • (1) Test (total power) functionality needed for antenna acceptance testing
        • (2) Dynamic Interferometry (software control of fringe rotation and delay)
        • (3) Write data in ALMA format
        • (4) Perform Calibration measurements such as Pointing Interferometrically
        • (5) Fast Switching
      • Current total power functionality available includes (not necessarily with ALMA/CIPT software):
        • Optical pointing (Acceptance 2007-May-24; much work still needed)
        • holography (Acceptance 2007-May-31; still needs work)
        • focus (2007-July-2?; still marginal but workable)
        • radiometric continuum pointing (2007-Sep-12; still needs much work)
      • Spectral-line pointing needs to be available in Q1 2008 for single dish testing in Chile.
      • The current schedule is below. Please let Alison and Debra know if anyone has any issues with this. During the current period foci of interest include to understand the behavior of the Line Length Corrector and to measure the baseline correctly.
2007
 
Week Event
Dec 16
Remijan, Indebetouw: More interferometry exercises. Support for data output work
Dec 22
Christmas/New Year break; no Sci IPT staffing
Dec 29
Christmas/New Year break; no Sci IPT staffing
Jan 5
Emerson?
Jan 12
Hunter, Laing

  • OSF
2007
 
Week Event
Jan ??
VxRSI antenna contractor handover testing begins 7 Jan

  1. Astronomer Outreach: ESO Newsletter New ESO Messenger with Antenna article, New ESO ALMA News New NRAO Newsletter appearing soon. NAOJ News. NRAO ALMA Calendar
  2. ARC News.
  3. Group Activities (all)
  4. Next meeting is on January 16th (14:30 UT). February 20th for the following month.

Emerson/Laing/Vila-Vilaro -- Instrument Scientists

  • PSI at the ATF: Schedule, Daily Logs
  • Remijan's site to submit updates/logs/checklists for most of the procedures necessary to operate and get up to speed on the current status of the software and control systems at the ATF can be found at: ATF Updates. Please use this system at the ATF so the next member of the science IPT who arrives on site has the most recent version of the checklists and updates. Please also enter something in the daily log section! If you want a new database created for new checklists that does not fall under Science IPT Notes, contact Remijan with the title of the checklist you desire and he will add it to the site.

Richard Hills, Alison Peck, Robert Laing -- Commissioning and Science Verification

  • Commissioning and Science Verification

Holdaway, Conway -- Configuration Group

  • Holdaway's description of the development of the design for the extended ALMA configurations, rev 2 for edm.
  • Eduardo Donoso and Simon Radford determined the separation between the planned ALMA antenna station A104 and the existing CBI generator plant is about 50 m. Tony Readhead and Radford agree this separation should be adequate for CBI operations and maintenance.
  • And then there were four... Array layout on the high site; weather station locations have orange dots. PDF. The Technical specifications and SOW for the IFB for the AOS Road network design have been completed. A design for road and fiber network at the high site is to be bid for construction shortly. Design of the extended array is complete; bids for antenna pad construction are out.
  • Final configuration design. We continue to assess performance (see imaging, below). We continue to assess configuration performance.
  • New <4km Configuration approved Passed CCB.
  • Proposed ACA Configuration approved.
  • ArrayCenter shows photos of the region of the center of the Array.

Steve Myers/Rob Reid (Mark Holdaway)-- Imaging

  • CASA Simulator Report
    • The Library of standard ALMA images for simulation is available.
    • Dirty beam images have been made for all of the ALMA configurations, for both snapshots and 4h exposures at a variety of declinations.
    • CASA simulation wiki with examples
    • Bojan Nikolic is using the simulator to make u-v data and maps when investigating the effects of atmospheric phase and, in the future for trying out phase-correction techniques.
  • Pointing selfcalibration for mosaics

Jeff Mangum -- Calibration

  • Pointing Design document now drafted.
  • 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, some need updates.
  • 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 has been made by Leonardo.

Robert Lucas -- SSR

  • Latest SSR meeting (2007-12-12).
  • Regular testing of subsystems and integrated system at the ATF.(see SSR link above)

Michiel Hogerheijde -- DRSP

  • While I work on including the author responses to the referee comments, the DRSP 2.0 web site continues to be password protected. If you would like access (keeping in mind that the author responses have not been added yet) use: username=review and password=chajnantor! (including the exclamation mark).

L.-A. Nyman -- Site Characterization

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

Science Corner:

Dynamic Scheduling on the GBT Notes on Dynamic Scheduling on the GBT

Calendar

Official JAO Calendar

ALMA Events of Interest

(see also Al's ALMA Biweekly Calendar)
2007
 
 
 
 
 
Day Date Time Event location details
 
Jan 10
 
NRAO Town Hall 12:45pm
Austin Tx AAS
 
 
Jan 15
 
ESAC face-to-face meeting
Garching
 
 
Jan 18
 
ANASAC telecon
---
 
 
Jan 23-24
 
Nutator CDR
ASIAA
 
 
Feb 1-2
 
ASAC face-to-face
Santiago
 
 
Feb 7-8
 
WVR CDR
 
 

Upcoming Meetings

North American URSI meeting Jan 3-6 2008, Boulder

AAS meeting Jan 7-11 2008, Austin, Tx (NRAO/ALMA booth)

IAU Symposium 251 Organic Matter in Space Feb 18-22, Hong Kong

The Cosmic Agitator - Magnetic Fields in the Galaxy 2008 March 26-29 Lexington.

See also NAASC listing

-- AlWootten - 14 Dec 2007 * SciIPT19Dec07notes.txt: Al's jottings during the discussion.
Topic attachments
I Attachment Action Size Date Who Comment
SciIPT19Dec07notes.txttxt SciIPT19Dec07notes.txt manage 6 K 2007-12-19 - 16:16 AlWootten Al's jottings during the discussion.
Topic revision: r8 - 2010-08-02, ToddHunter
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