ALMA North American Science Advisory Committee

Contact Information for those calling in.

* Call date: 2019-2-20 12:00 pm EST or 17:00 UT ((Thursday in Taipei))
  • Duration: 1 hr
    * USA Number: 866-692-3582
    • Passcode: 5862937 #
  • Leaders: S. White, P. Jewell, A. Wootten
  • CV Room: PRJ office


MEETING MINUTES ANASAC telecon: 2019 Feb 20

Present: Jin Koda, Shih-Ping Lai, Giles Novak, Rachel Osten, Kate Su, Stephen White, Chris Wilson; Phil Jewell, Crystal Brogan, Al Wootten, Tony Remijan

ALMA International Visiting Committee (IVC)

- The IVC has asked for regional SACs as well as ASAC to provide an opinion on three questions: whether ALMA has met its initial science goals, whether the performance goals for the next 5 years are appropriate (Al assumes this means the development roadmap), and (paraphrasing) is ALMA 2030 sufficiently ambitious?

- Phil filled in some background: although the IVC should be formed every 5 years per the original ALMA agreement, the first effort 5 years ago was largely just an operations review, so this is effectively the first formal IVC and there is no heritage to draw on. In particular, since the requests from the IVC were only delivered last week, there is still quite a bit of confusion about what they really want. NA members are Jim Oschmann, Cathy Flanagan and Andrew Baker. The ALMA Management Team have asked for more clarity on the IVC request.

- The IVC have also asked for one SAC member and one Users' Committee member to be present during regional site visits. Since ANASAC members are also UC members, only one person is required for the NAASC site visit (July 22-24, probably only required for 1 day). Only the IVC members from NA will visit NAASC. Rachel or Stephen may be available ANASAC members.

- The regional SAC report is nominally requested to be ready in April, but clarification will be sought on what is required.

Joint proposals with JWST:

- ASAC has been asked to reconsider science cases for joint JWST-ALMA proposals, and any feedback from ANASAC will be valuable.

- Rachel commented that this was first considered while she was on ASAC, about 2 years ago, and that STScI were enthusiastic to trial this using joint HST-ALMA proposals. On JWST's side joint proposals cannot happen before Cycle 2. The GO deadline for Cycle 2 should be 13 months after launch. Assuming a launch date in 2021 March, this would put the proposal deadline in 2022 April at the earliest.

- Chris noted that an issue for starting with joint HST proposals is that we anticipate needing 2 years to get approval for joint proposals, in which case trialling the process with HST could probably not be done beforehand.

- Stephen commented that ESAC was opposed to joint proposals when discussed at the last ASAC meeting and has reportedly maintained that position at their recent meeting. However, both NRAO and ESO have indicated (at the last Board meeting) that they wish to pursue joint proposals.

- Al pointed out that in considering possible science, we should think in the context of ALMA's future capabilities, not the current ones.

- Rachel noted that JWST will have the first IFU in space, and obvious applications are to do chemistry with ALMA and dynamics with JWST.

- Rachel circulated a link to the pocket guide to JWST capabilities, at https://jwst.stsci.edu/files/live/sites/jwst/files/home/instrumentation/tech nical%20documents/jwst-pocket-guide.pdf

- Crystal noted that there are science cases for protoplanetary disks that require simultaneous observations, and she was volunteered to ask Isle Cleeves for a paragraph on that topic.

- Several other science case paragraphs were promised.

2020 Astrophysics Decade report:

- Crystal asked if people working on submissions to the Decade Report could refer to the ALMA 2030 report wherever appropriate to the science. The report is now available on the archive and can be referenced. (NOTE: A link is given in the agenda for this teleconference.) In addition to promoting ALMA science, mentions of ALMA 2030 in this Decade Report will also lay the groundwork for the major requests anticipated to be made at the next review in order to carry out the expensive upgrades needed to implement ALMA 2030.

- NRAO is working on several white papers focussed on ALMA science as well.

Use of the alma-na email list:

- Dan Marrone has raised the question of whether the alma-na email list should be used for non-ALMA requests. The list is moderated by Tony Remijan and Katelyn Sevin. Al argued that it was OK to request community input for related topics using the list. Tony said that they receive typically 6-8 requests per year from outside, and that he thought that the survey was an appropriate use. No further objections were raised.

Other business:

- Giles discussed the issue of how often ANASAC telecons should be held.

- Al mentioned recent ALMA memos, and acknowledged that they are often difficult to find because of NRAO web location decisions beyond ALMA's control.

  • Attendees:

Agenda

Topics

  1. Old Business
  2. New Business under Discussion.

Discussion Items

  1. (1) Items related to the IVC activities:
    • As part of a bi-decadal review of ALMA by an independent outside group called the International Visiting Committee (IVC), the ANASAC and the two other regional SACs have each been asked to provide independent reports addressing the following:
      • The status of ALMA as compared to its original, level-one science goals.
      • Are the performance goals for the next 5 years consistent with the mission of the Observatory?
      • Is the ALMA Development Roadmap appropriate to maintain ALMA as the state-of-the-art and world leading facility for millimeter/submillimeter astronomy?
  2. (2) Joint proposals between JWST and ALMA: The ASAC has been tasked with coming up with possible science cases that would benefit from joint JWST-ALMA proposals. ASAC would like input from ANASAC on this, and also advice on how to get the larger community involved.
  3. (3) Any role for ANASAC in ALMA presence in the 2010 decadal report?
    • In order to "socialize" the idea that ALMA will likely ask for a significant upgrade for the 2030 era, it would be helpful if you can reference the public version of the Roadmap given in item (7), especially in areas where your science is currently limited by ALMA's sensitivity, angular resolution, simultaneous spectral grasp (which can mean total bandwidth or tunability)
  4. (4) The ASAC charges for the Feb 28-March 1 ASAC meeting are attached.
  5. (5) Future ANASAC meetings and telecons (reminder: ANASAC meets in Charlottesville on Tuesday June 4th).
  6. (6) Use of the ALMA-na-users email list. “Survey to gauge community interest in the NSF MRI proposal "MRI: The Leighton Chajnantor Telescope”” was sent to the ALMA-na-users email list on 18 January. Was that appropriate?
  7. * ASAC f2f Meeting. *ASAC members contact ksevin@nrao.edu for authorizations, reimbursements. * zipfile of ASAC presentations Need pw? Ask Al. * (4) The ASAC agenda for the Feb 28-March 1 ASAC meeting is attached.:
  8. NAASC
    • Cycle 6 progress update
    • Cycle 7. A pre-announcement for the ALMA Cycle 7 Call for Proposals has appeared at the ALMA Science Portal.
    • ALMA Ambassadors are appointed, educated, sent forth (see eNews).
    • In cycle 8, we will not be moving out to the most extended baselines, C43-9 and C43-10. This will be socialized to the community in a news item. We await a formal announcement to come out from JAO.
    • Proposal Writing Workshop: In preparation for the April ALMA proposal deadline. We have reserved a room at the NAASC, and will support remote connection on request. Details on request; weekly hour-long sessions through 1 April on various topics.
    • ALMA Goals as presented at AMT/IXT: a) Increase the reach of the ALMA Community - specifically to the OIR community. b) Continue to match or exceed the publication rate of the top facilities.
    • Recent ALMA Memos:
      • 612 The ALMA Development Roadmap J. Carpenter, et al. 06/28/18
      • 613 ALMA FITS Header Keywords: A Study from the Archive User Perspective E. Liuzzo, et al. 12/12/18
      • 614 The ALMA Re-Imaging Development Study M. Massardi, et al. 01/16/19
      • 615 Total Power Map to Visibilities (TP2VIS): Joint-Deconvolution of ALMA 12M, 7M & Total Power Array Data J. Koda, P. Teuben, T. Sawada, A. Plunkett, E. Fomalont 02/14/19
  9. ALMA Development
  10. Press Releases
  11. ALMA Papers (choose ALMA)

Events of Interest

2019
 
 
 
 
 
25 Feb 2019
 
Proposal Writing Workshop
Charlottesville
 
 
4-8 March 2019
 
Dusting the Universe
The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
web
 
13-15 Mar 2019
 
ALMA Data Reduction Party
Charlottesville, VA
registration full
 
13-17 May 2019
 
New Horizons in Planetary Systems
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Web
 
4-6 June 2018
 
NRAO Users/ANASAC meeting
Charlottesville
 
 
13-14 June 2019
 
NRAO Community Day at UMBC
Baltimore, MD
 
 
25-27 June 2019
 
Radio/mm Astrophysical Frontiers in the Next Decade
Charlottesville, VA
 
 
7-18 Oct 2019
 
7th VLA Data Reduction Workshop
Socorro, NM
 
 

See also google calendars:
  1. ALMA Science Meetings

-- AlWootten - 2019-02-19

Topic attachments
ISorted descending Attachment Action Size Date Who Comment
ASAC_Development_NAJan1619update.pdfpdf ASAC_Development_NAJan1619update.pdf manage 1 MB 2019-02-19 - 16:12 AlWootten ALMA NA Development Report
ASAC_report_October_2018_final.pdfpdf ASAC_report_October_2018_final.pdf manage 282 K 2019-02-19 - 13:58 AlWootten ASAC Report to the ALMA Board at its November 2018 Meeting
AsacF2f_Feb_2019__ADO:ASAC__TWiki.pdfpdf AsacF2f_Feb_2019__ADO:ASAC__TWiki.pdf manage 67 K 2019-02-19 - 22:35 AlWootten (4) The ASAC agenda for the Feb 28-March 1 ASAC meeting is attached.
BoardCharges.pdfpdf BoardCharges.pdf manage 42 K 2019-02-19 - 16:08 AlWootten (4) The ASAC charges for the Feb 28-March 1 ASAC meeting are attached.
Topic revision: r5 - 2019-03-07, KatelynSevin
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