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Contact Information

• 2007-9-19 14:30 UT Please check your local time; it may have changed! NB ESAC f2f scheduled in conflict with this meeting...
• Duration: 1 hr
• USA Toll Free Number: 877-874-1919
• Toll Number: +1-203-320-9891
• Passcode: 185064
• Leader: Al Wootten
• Attendees: Liu, Hills, Remijan, Peck, Morita, Emerson, Wootten, C. Wilson, Brogan, Mangum, Reid, Hales, Hibbard, Indebetouw, Shepherd

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.

Panel tiers 2, 3 and 4 are mounted on the Vx antenna at the OSF. Antenna No 2 should arrive in Chile 2007 Sept 8. See other images and animations. See other images.

Photogrammetry occurs soon on Melco No. 1.

At the ATF, the AEC brake and ACU issues have been resolved and static fringes on Mercury have been demonstrated with the new 2-antenna correlator and preproduction backends. Thanks to everyone for getting the ATF back into operation, especially Jack Meadows for fixing the AEC brakes, and Gene DuVall and Peter Napier for demonstrating fringes. All fringes were achieved using the new pointing model determined by Darrel Emerson and Jeff Mangum; onee does not need to adjust the pointing over time now since the new model is better than the previous one.

1. New Business--Project news/updates (Wootten, Testi, Morita)
   • ASAC agenda for 5 Sept includes Charges and reading materials. ESAC f2f discussion 19 Sep, EASAC f2f scheduled 6 October.
     • Board Response to ASAC Report.
   • AAER Report - Summary; Charge and Panel
   • Jobs. Commissioning Scientist Santiago Positions, ARC Positions NRAO ESO open.
2. Standard documents
   • Science IPT Action Items for the JAO/IPT meetings
     • APeck- SciIPT/DSO revised staffing profile 2008-2012, including ATF support and science fractions (DRAFT SENT)
     • DS/APeck - Investigate alignment of commissioning/calibrations hardware & software requirements with CIPT/hardware IPT plans, priorities and schedules. (UNDERWAY)
     • AWootten - Develop plan for close out of existing Site characterization equipment/ongoing monitoring. (Begun, but not urgently)
     • AWootten,RReid - Independent configuration check.: Still dragging onward. Most elementsin place; Holdaway is reportedly writing up the work he did. See below for Reid report.
     • RLaing: R&D required for metrology startup?? draft expected post AEM metrology mission; This is in draft.
     • JMangum: Pointing design description -- Draft submitted. Sci does not have requisite info on metrology design for AEM and Melco antennas; Vx info unreleasable.
   • ALMA Construction Picture Gallery
   • ALMA Safety Requirements
   • Photo gallery of construction events in Chile
   • Risk Register v7.0 Need to update to 7.2 (not sure where 7.1 is).
3. Current Science IPT Schedule. Current Operations Schedule. Schematic IPS. (2007 August 31)
4. Directories
   • Science IPT Directory All contributors to ALMA Science IPT (Sept06). Please send AW any corrections or changes. * Please update your information for the new edition.
   • ALMA Directory ALMA Directory v3.0
   • ALMA JAO Directory ALMA JAO Directory

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 -
   • Planning ATF, OSF and AOS.
     • Summary (Peck)
     • Commissioning Scientist job postings. (Testi, Wootten)
   • Change Control Board items
   • ATF:
     • 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
       • Current total power functionality available includes (not necessarily with ALMA/CIPT software):
         • Optical pointing (Acceptance 2007-May-24)
         • holography (Acceptance 2007-May-31?)
         • focus (2007-July-2?; some hiccups thru mid-August)
         • radiometric continuum pointing (2007-Sep-12)
     • As per discussions with Alison the current schedule is below. Please let Alison and Debra know if anyone has any issues with this. During this period Simple Phase trajectory will be established and verified. Only the FLOOG will be used, no 2nd LO. Total power goals concentrate on Focus and Raster scans, Skydips. Try to move to interferometric focus, pointing during period.

2007
Week	Event
Sept 10	Laing, Carilli, Remijan: Radiometric pointing, goal of dynamic interferometry
Sept 17	Emerson, Laing, Remijan, Hales: Radiometric pointing, goal of dynamic interferometry
Sept 24	Laing, Hales: Radiometric pointing, goal of dynamic interferometry
Oct 1	Hales, Reid: Radiometric pointing, goal of dynamic interferometry
Oct 7	Reid: Radiometric pointing, goal of dynamic interferometry

1. Astronomer Outreach: NRAO Newsletter New ESO, New NRAO Newsletter NAOJ News. NRAO ALMA Calendar
2. ARC News.
3. Group Activities (all)
4. Next meeting is on October 17th (14:30 UT). November 21st(?) for the following month.

Emerson/Laing/Vila-Vilaro -- Instrument Scientists

• PSI at the ATF: Schedule, Daily Logs
• (Remijan) Remijan arrived at the ATF on Sept 13th. There have been software issues for the last week that has halted science observing for most of the week. As of 7PM Sept 18th, "another" new version of the telescope control software is being updated and implemented. Limited science observing has taken place as a result. Rodents were NOT the cause of the AEC being down all weekend but were also not welcomed.
• Remijan has added a 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. This 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. 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.

Conway, Holdaway -- Configuration Group

• 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.

Jeff Mangum -- Calibration

• Semi-transparent Vane Report has been received.
• 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 sent to Robert Laing. NOTE: I need suggested vendors for the temperature profiler.

Robert Lucas -- SSR

• Latest SSR meeting (2007-09-12).
• ASDM changes implemented, being integrated (this week in Garching). ASDM freezout intended for end of year.
• Software testing at ATF: single dish and simple interferometry.

Michiel Hogerheijde -- DRSP

• All DRSP2.0 projects have been reviewed, and responses of the authors have been collected. The findings were discussed at the ESAC and ASAC face-to-face meetings in April and May, and are summarized below.
  • Out of 149 projects from 53 authors, 42 were revised w.r.t. DRSP 1.0; 18 are entirely new; and the reminder (85) was either unchanged or no response was received (but still reviewed).
  • The distribution over science areas has not changed much.
  • Integration times were tweaked here and there, but the main uncertainty lies in including realistic overheads.
  • Quite a few projects requested cross-correlation of the 7m ACA antennas with the baseline-ALMA 12m antennas. While for some projects this is indeed essential, for most this was used only to increase the sensitivity. In terms of scheduling and operations this may be undesirable, and this needs to be reflected in the DRSP to make sure the 7m*12m is not 'overbooked'. *H
  • Once the final DRSP 2.0 projects with the authors' response included and reasoned 7m*12m requests included are added to the web site, the password protection on the latter will be removed. The details of the DRSP 2.0 will also be entered into a spreadsheet.
  • OT is almost ready to try deriving observing modes and overheads using DRSP 2.0 projects.
• Hogerheijde presentation on DRSP2.0 to the ASAC

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

• Commissioning and Science Verification
  • Plan.

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

• CASA Simulator Report
  • Dirty beam images have been made for all of the ALMA configurations, for both snapshots and 4h exposures at a variety of declinations.
  • Preliminary CASA simulation examples
  • Bojan Nikolic will be evaluating the CASA simulator for testing an atmospheric phase model the Cambridge group is developing.

• Pointing selfcalibration for mosaics

L.-A. Nyman -- Site Characterization

• The weather station 50-100m north of the APEX antenna was removed to the OSF. Its mounting pole was also removed.
• In December 2006 JeffMangum submitted weather station instrumentation (RH, P, T, and wind) RFQ documentation to NRAO procurement system. After having reviewed information received from bidders and consulted with Calibration Group (see CalAncillary for discussion), on 2007/03/21 JeffMangum submitted purchase information to RobertLaing for procurement. Leonardo Testi received first set of weather measurement devices at ESO in late October. Will assemble unit at ESO for testing.
• ICD submitted for AOS site locations discussed during August meeting. A few kinks under discussion with computing and site include power distribution (440V needs transformer) and fiber lighting (only done when antenna occupies station).The battery bank ESO2 now supplying power at the AOS will be moved to the guardhouse at the intersection of CH23 and the ALMA Road. Ulf Kaberger to implement; presumed done now but no confirmation has been received.

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

• ALMA White Paper on Lab Astrophysics needs
  • NASA Laboratory Astrophysics Workshop White Paper
  • Workshop on Submillimeter and Far-Infrared Laboratory Spectroscopy in Support of Herschel, SOFIA, and ALMA Report
• Splatalogue.net is still the home for Splatalogue but see below for the test version we are working on here at NRAO.
• A new "face" for Splatalogue including new search features can be found at Splatalogue. Please send comments on the form and functionality displayed. NOTE: while the functionality may be displayed, it may NOT be active yet!
• The alpha release of Splatalogue was in Feb 2007. We are expecting a "beta" release of all the new functionality, as well as some new surprises, by Dec 2007. Remijan presented the "New Splatalogue" to the ANASAC on Aug 17th and Remijan has a trip planned to Caltech and the NHSC from Oct 24-26 to show Splatalogue to the CSO, CCAT and Herschel.

Discussion of pipeline heuristics and how science advice may be incorporated.

Science Corner:

The Proceedings of the First NAASC ALMA Workshop, From Z-Machines to ALMA: (Sub)Millimeter Spectroscopy of Galaxies, has been published as Volume number 375 of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series. A. Baker, J. Glenn, A. I. Harris, J. Mangum and Min S. Yun edited the volume.

Calendar

Official JAO Calendar

ALMA Events of Interest

(see also Al's ALMA Biweekly Calendar)

2007
Day	Date	Time	Event	location	details
WeTh	Jun 27-28	all day	ALMA Board Meeting	f2f	Santiago
We	Jul 11	1430UT	ASAC	Telecon
We	Jul 18	1430UT	ALMA Sci IPT Telecon	Telecon
We	Aug 1	1430UT	ASAC	Telecon
We	Aug 15	1430UT	ALMA Sci IPT Telecon	Telecon
	Sep 10-12	all day	Director's Review of ALMA	f2f	Satniago
We	Sep 19	1430UT	ALMA Sci IPT Telecon	Telecon
	Sep 24	all day	B6/B3 CDR	f2f	Cville
TuWe	Oct 30-31	all day	ALMA Board Meeting	f2f	Santiago
Mo	Nov 5	all day	ALMA Peoduction Review	f2f	Santiago

Upcoming Meetings

North American URSI meeting July 22-26, Ottawa; Emerson, Reid attending.

ALMA Community Meeting and the Workshop on Surveys for ALMA 3-6 Sept, Garching. Testi, Laing attending, perhaps others.

Astrophysics in the Next Decade: JWST and Concurrent Facilities September 24-27, 2007, Tucson Arizona Wootten, Testi, Brogan attending.

See also NAASC listing

-- AlWootten - 14 Sep 2007