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.

-- AlWootten - 2019-03-10
Topic revision: r1 - 2019-03-10, AlWootten
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