ALMA North American Science Advisory Committee

• ASAC met at NAOJ in Tokyo
  

Contact Information for those calling in.

• Call date: 2013-2-21 02:00 pm EST or 18:00 UT (Thursday (Friday in Taipei))
• Duration: 1 hr
  * USA Number: 1-866-692-4538
• Outside Tokyo in Japan Number: 0066-33-132434
• Outside USA +1-517-466-2084
• Passcode: 3668477#
• Confirmation Number: 1883473
• Leaders: J. Carpenter, P. Jewell, A. Wootten, C. Lonsdale

• Attendees: Al Wootten Phil Jewell Carol Lonsdale Alberto Bolatto John Carpenter Dick Crutcher Leslie Looney Dan Marrone Karin Oberg Rachel Osten Dick Plambeck James Di Francesco

Topics

1. Old Business The enhanced Agenda from last meeting is available. Minutes from that meeting are available.
2. New Business under Discussion.

Discussion Items

1. Construction Status (Wootten)
   • See NRAO eNews
   • Operating on two turbines; considerable wet weather during the Altiplanic winter.
   • 52 antennas at the AOS. As we speak the final NA antenna DV25 is on its way to the AOS (53rd antenna, intended pad 102).
     • Power failure took out all antennas earlier in the month; dewars being pumped down. Available Antennas: 22--flavors: DV: 15 DA: 0 PM: 1 CM: 6
   • Nutator delivered, testing has begun.
   • All ALMA Front Ends have been completed. An integration facility is being installed at the OSF.
   • Power. PPS to power portions of the AOS array
   • CSV: Testing long baselines to begin soon.
   • Science Workshops and Meetings
     • Solar ALMA Workshop 14-17 Jan Glasgow; Bastian provided notes.
     • ASAC f2f meeting and ALMA Development Workshop Mitaka Japan 14-16 Feb. Agenda and Presentations on edm.alma.cl
     • U. Va. Space Science Symposium
     • ALMA B11 Workshop Queen’s College, University of Oxford, UK, March 19th-20th, 2013
     • Herschel Calibration Workshop 25-27 March, ESAC, Madrid
     • Joint NAASC/Taiwan workshop "Transformational Science with ALMA: From Dust to Rocks to Planets"Kona, Hawaii, April 8-12 2013;
     • Radio Astronomy in the LSST Era 6-8 May, Charlottesville
     • VLB Workshop 13-17 May Shanghai
     • Requirements for UTC and Civil Timekeeping on Earth 29-31 May, UVa, Charlottesville, Va
     • Exploring the Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems Victoria, B. C., 2 June 2013 - Friday, 7 June 2013
     • Seventh NAIC/NRAO Single-Dish Summer School Arecibo. 10-17 July 2013
2. Operations (Hibbard)
   • JAO Report December 2012: See Science and Operations sections.
   • Monthly Reports for previous months.
   • Cycle 1 Status:
     • See Science Portal news items about the Cycle1 proposal review results, plans for the early part of the cycle, and for cycle 0 news.
     • Cycle 0 Status: Data delivery by end of February (see portal)
     • ALMA Archive: ALMA Science data was made available the week of December 6 (expiration of proprietary period for first delivered ALMA data)
3. ASAC Items Presentations on edm.alma.cl Presentation on feedback to project added 2/21.
   • Charges 1.*Evaluate the outcomes of Cycle 0.* This should include an evaluation of the high-profile science results as well as the fidelity of the implementation of Cycle 0 observing to the APRC priorities, the user experience, consistent with the best efforts approach to early science.
   • 2.*Evaluate the Cycle 1 process through the proposal review and feedback to proposers. * Is the feedback from the Cycle 1 review process to the PIs satisfactory or should different information be provided to proposers?
   • 3.*Comment on the scientific priorities relating to the Cycle 2 capabilities and advise on the scientific priorities for Cycle 3. * The capabilities under discussion are (as of early January 2013) are
     • 40 12 m antennas
     • 2 km baselines
     • full ACA (however, no nutators for continuum observations. Band 9 TP continuum will not be offered.
     • Band 4 and 8 expected to be announced for the second half of Cycle 2
     • 4 SPWs / baseband
     • Polarization and long baselines 93 pm) will be offered if they can be demonstrated before the Call for Proposals
   • 4. _Advise the Board on scientific issues relating to the timing of the implementation of Large proposals (defined to be projects requiring more than 100 hours) and nature of possible Legacy (no proprietary time) proposals and possible time-series proposals that would extend across cycle boundaries._ If there are to be Legacy (no proprietary time) projects, should the time accounting not be assigned to any region? Should such proposals be allowed in Cycle 2? How much time (or what fraction of the array time) should be possible for such proposals?
   • 5. _Advise the Board on the adequacy of public information currently provided on proposals that are identified as high priority or fillers, those that have been completed, and those for which the data are publically available from the archive._ What kind of information should be available to minimize duplication of effort and on what timescale? Include a full scientific rationale for recommendations for release of information.
   • ASAC Charges for Feb 2013: AEDM_2012-139-O_(Rev1)_Charges_to_ASAC_for_February_2013_Meeting.pdf
4. ALMA Development (Wootten)
   • Development-See Workshop materials linked above
   • Studies proceeding. Workshop April, Call for Studies late Q2, Call for Proposals thereafer.
5. NAASC during Early Science (Lonsdale)
   • People * ALMA postdoc hire: Drew Brisbin (from Cornell).
   • Meetings upcoming with ALMA or NAASC-related components (see above) * ALMA Data Reduction Workshop NAASC, 28 Feb-1 Mar
   • What is happening at the NAASC?
     • Contact Scientists for all C0 projects that are not fully delivered are contacting PIs with status update
       • All viable data will be delivered by Feb 28
       • If more than 50% observed, they will be reduced and delivered in the normal fashion; QA2 criteria relaxed
       • If less than 50% observed, will be script-reduced at JAO without imaging
     • For Cycle 1, Contact Scientists have been assigned for the first batch of 12 projects and the PIs have been contacted. We are in the process of reviewing the scheduling blocks with them. First opportunity for data is session beginning Jan 23.
     • Pipeline -
6. Astronomer Outreach (Lonsdale, Wootten)
   • Data reduction workshop in CV Feb 28, Mar 1
   • Planning a series of short webinars focused on specific topics
   • Other Astronomer Outreach: JAO ALMA Webpages; ALMA Newsletters; ARC-maintained wiki of ALMA science meetings and training events; NRAO eNews; NAOJ News.
7. Date of next telecon
   • 21 Mar 2013
   • Proposed dates for 2013 telecons: 4/18. 5/16. 6/20, 7/18, 8/16, 9/19, 10/17, 11/21, 12/19
8. Other Business

Science Corner

1. Another ALMA SV/Cyc0 data paper has appeared...
   • First detection of c-C3H2 in a circumstellar disk Chunhua Qi, Karin Oberg, David Wilner, Katherine Rosenfeld

Events of Interest

Upcoming, very recent, or ongoing Meetings

1. ALMA Science Meetings
2. ALMA Training Events

• Draft Document on Science with a Phased ALMA: science_case-20130115.pdf