ALMA North American Science Advisory Committee

• Long Baselines, lonely antennas:

Contact Information for those calling in.

• Call date: 2014-11-20 2:00 pm EST or 19:00 UT (Thursday (Friday in Taipei))
• Duration: 1 hr
  * USA Number: 1-866-692-4538
• Outside USA +1-517-466-2084
• Passcode: 9480444#
• Leaders: A. Bolatto, P. Jewell, A. Wootten
• CV Room: 331

• Attendees:

Topics

1. Old Business
2. New Business under Discussion.

Discussion Items

1. NAASC (Jewell)

• Long Baseline Campaign (LBC) LBC is currently finishing up
  • Moving antennas into more compact configurations
  • ES Observing will resume at the end of this month
• NA ALMA Antenna Review
  • Panel met on 27-29 October in Charlottesville
    • Chaired by David Woody with 10 other members from other executives and independent experts
  • Determined three good possibilities for the surface accuracy (vs temperature) issues:
    • Squeezing of the receiver cabin by the (cold) yoke
    • Azimuthal thermal gradients in the receiver cabin
    • Quadrupod asymmetry
  • The panel suggested several follow-up actions to narrow these down.
  • NRAO is working on a project plan and will engage Vertex and JAO in the program.
• ALMA Board Meeting
  • Operation’s Readiness Review Deferred until week of 27 April 2015
  • Long Baseline Campaign SV data will be released to the public in February. The JAO staff plans to write a 4/5 papers summarizing at a high level the results of the LBC which will be submitted shortly thereafter, in accordance with procedure. The Board discussed and noted this plan.
  • The ASAC report recommendations were accepted by the Board.
• UC / ANASAC Report received, response is being prepared.
  • ANASAC f2f Report: ANASACf2f2014-v2.pdf
• The NAASC has two positions advertised – an astronomer (tenure track) and a scientist track (one or more positions available).

1. Program Scientist (Wootten)
   • Science
     • gained widespread coverage: more than 300 separate news stories generated. The ALMA story had a circulation of 455 million (based on LexisNexis data). Fact sheet has been appended to the press release.
     • 161 refereed papers published so far, 119 Cycle 0. Five from Cycle 1 (three regular plus two DDT).
     • Four refereed papers published in October journals (one was Nature).
     • Some recent ALMA results
   • ASAC f2f
     • Final ASAC Report Oct 2014
     • Bolatto Board presentation on ASAC Report
     • ALMA Large Projects: recommendedDefinitionALMALPs.pdf
     • Alberto's discussion
   • NAASC Meetings and Workshop
     • The List of accepted talks and posters for the ALMA Conference in Tokyo is available. Postdoc Symposium afterward is organized.
     • AAS Seattle.
       • AAS - Splinter Session "New Capabilities at the NRAO" - Tuesday, Jan 6, 1:30-3:30pm, (before NRAO Town Hall on Tues evening) talks on NRAO instruments, discussion, hands-on help.
       • NRAO Town Hall Jan 6 evening
       • Plenary session on Recent Results from ALMA. Jan 8 late morning
       • "Next Generation Very Large Array," Organizers: Bryan Butler (NRAO) and Chris Carilli (NRAO) -- Sunday, Jan 4, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
     • Ground and Space Observatories observing the Solar System (ESO/NAASC workshop 2-5 March 2015 in Santiago)
     • Others of note:
       • The EHT Science and Collaboration will hold a meeting in Waterloo, Canada at the Perimeter Institute occurred on Nov 10-14.
       • "Workshop on mm-VLBI with ALMA" to be held in Bologna on the 22nd and 23rd of January 2015
       • Ground and space observatories: a joint venture to planetary science Santiago, Chile, March 2 - 5, 2015 Deadline for abstract submission: November 24, 2014
       • Dissecting Galaxies Near and Far: High Resolution Views of Star Formation and the ISM Santiago, Chile, March 23 - 27, 2015
       • ALMA/Herschel Archival Workshop ESO Garching, April 15-17, 2015
   • Early Science status.
     • ES suspended pending long baseline campaign
   • ALMA Development (Wootten)
     • NA Calls
       • Studies are in progress.
       • Projects approved by ALMA Board are in progress.
       • Upcoming Calls
2. Science Status (Lonsdale)
   • ES begins again Dec2 in most compact configuration (C34-1). Another ES hiatus Feb/Mar for annual software/hardware upgrades.
   • ALMA Status Report was posted to SP on Nov 12, and broadcast to NA community
     • Includes configuration schedule, observing statistics, remaining observing pressure as function of LST, config & Band, EOC summary
   • PL-assisted data reduction is ongoing. Our goal is to get these to attending PIs before December
   • Cycle 3 planning:
     • Call/Deadline in Mar/Apr next year; panel meetings June in Japan; observing starts Oct1. 12mo cycle, so will be close to yearly cadence
     • Cycle 3 proto-capabilities (TBC): 36 antennas, longer baselines (frequency dependent), FDM polarization. Go/no-go decision on these will be made on Dec1. SG limitations will persist (5 tunings, 150ptg, 10deg limits per SG)
   • Support to JAO: E. Fomalont & A. Remijan (long term EOC support), T. Hunter/ C. Brogan/L. Perez (long term EOC support for long baseline campaign Oct/Nov); R. Simon/J. DiFrancesco /K. Sheth/D. Brisben (AoD support Dec/Jan).
   • NA Cycle 1&2 Data Reduction update (Nov17):
     • Cycle 1: 198 HP projects in total. 140 (70%) with some SBs finished, 127 (64%) with some data delivered; 64 (32%) completely delivered.
     • Cycle 2: Cycle 2 HP Projects: 354 projects in total. 113 (32%) with some SBs finished, 62 (18%) with some data delivered; 12 (3%) completely delivered.
3. Astronomer Outreach
   • Next NAASC Workshop.
   • ALMA Cycle 2 SOS Awards
   • A NA Regional workshop has occurred:
     • Filamentary Structure in Molecular Clouds 10-11 Oct, Charlottesville
   • Future Planning:
     • ALMA Cycle 3 - Documentation review and update
     • CDEs for ALMA Cycle 3 - Hosts being confirmed
     • Radio Astronomy Summer School 2015: dates confirmed for summer school on single-dish and interferometry at the GBT -- July 5-14, with interferometry sessions running July 12,13,14. 50 participants.
     • 2015 AAAS Annual Meeting(February 2015).
       • 180 Minute Symposium: Galaxy Assembly
   • International workshops:
     • ALMA Conference 2014. "Revolution in Astronomy with ALMA -- The Third Year" 2014 December 8 to 11 at Tokyo International Forum near Tokyo Station
   • Other Astronomer Outreach: NAASC TV, JAO ALMA Webpages; ALMA Newsletters; ALMA Science Meetings; ALMA Training Events; NRAO eNews; NAOJ News.
4. Date of next meeting
   • 15 Jan 2015
   • Proposed dates for 2015 telecons: 15 Jan, 5 Mar, 7 May, 2 Jul, 3 Sep, 5 Nov. Comments please.
5. Other Business

Science Corner

1. Memos and papers of note
2. Press Releases
3. ALMA Papers (choose ALMA)

Events of Interest

1. ALMA Science Meetings
2. ALMA Training Events