ALMA North American Science Advisory Committee

  • Long Baselines, lonely antennas:
    LB SergioOtarola nrao.jpg
Longest ALMA baselines achieved yet This image shows ALMA antennas on distant pads with the central antennas in the background. Credit: ALMA (NRAO/ESO/NAOJ); Sergio Otarola Credit: NAOJ

Contact Information for those calling in.

  • Call date: 2014-10-02 2:00 pm EDT or 18:00 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)
  • ALMA Construction Successfully Ended Sep 30th!
    • By long-standing agreement with the ALMA Board and the Executive funding agencies, the formal end of ALMA construction was 30 Sep.
    • NA ended the project with money in the bank
    • A small number of punch-list items remain, and NSF has granted a 6 month no-cost extension to check these off. These items include
      • Delivery of last 3 Front End Handling Vehicles from vendor
      • Delivery of 6 special purpose utility vehicles from vendor
      • Punchlist and permitting items for Switchgear, Site Erection Facility
      • Antenna Astigmatism Review
      • Asset capitalization
      • Project data organization and archiving
      • Closeout report for NSF
    • This punch-list and close-out should be completed by 31 Dec 2014, although the no-cost extension runs until 31 March 2015.

  • Long Baseline Campaign (LBC)
    • The LBC testing campaign is proceeding very well
    • Most recent array configuration shown below:

  • LBC is currently running ahead of testing schedule
    • Group is considering increasing scope (in place of contingency time)
      • Moving antennas into more extended configurations
  • NA ALMA Antenna Review
    • Long-standing concern that NA antennas may not meet surface accuracy specification over full range of ambient operating temperature of the array
      • Specs: <= 25um over +/- 20C, 9 m/s wind
    • Some antennas appear astigmatic, particularly at (low) temperature extremes
    • Have now completed re-analysis of essentially all existing astro-holography data
    • A significant fraction of the antennas appear to exceed the 25um spec at the low temp extreme
    • Have organized a panel of experts to examine the measurements, determine (if possible) root cause, and recommend corrective actions
    • Chaired by David Woody (Caltech)
    • Panel will meet 27-29 October, will report back to NRAO Director within one month
    • Panel meeting will be collaborative format – Vertex staff will be participating.
  • ALMA Management Team (AMT) formed
    • ALMA Director (Cox), Deputy Director (Corder), Executive Operations Managers (Iguchi, Jewell, Wild)
    • Act at operational level on Director’s Council initiatives, interface between Integrated operations teams (IET, ICT, SciOps, etc.), act on Change Board matters, ALMA Development Steering Committee issues.
    • Major action now is preparing for the ALMA Operations Review
      • charge recently received from ALMA Board
      • Jan / Feb 2015 time frame
  • ANASAC f2f Meeting 28 May 2014
    • UC / ANASAC Report received, response being prepared.
  1. Program Scientist (Wootten)
    • ASAC f2f
    • NAASC Meetings and Workshop
    • Early Science status.
      • ES suspended pending long baseline campaign
      • For NA, in Cycle 0 there were 36 highly ranked proposals (31 with 'some good data delivered') and 5 lesser ranked (filler) proposals (3 with 'some good data delivered'). As of September, 33 papers have been produced from data from 15 highly ranked projects and two filler projects. Among these, thirteen papers from four projects were in the 'Cosmology' category, four papers from four projects were in the 'Galaxies' category, twelve papers from ten projects in the 'ISM & Star Formation' Category and there were four papers from two projects in the stellar evolution Category. Unpublished projects include 8 Cosmology, 3 Galaxies, 6 ISM and one Stellar evolution, the Sun and the solar system.
      • First Cycle 1 papers have appeared (4 from NA)
    • ALMA Development (Wootten)
      • NA Calls
        • Studies have begun.
        • Projects approved by ALMA Board have begun.
  2. Science Status (Hibbard, Lonsdale)
    • In the early parts of the Long Baseline Campaign (Sep-Oct-Nov). ES begins again Dec2 in most compact configuration (C34-1). Another ES hiatus Feb/Mar for annual software/hardware upgrades.
    • ACA correlator problems prevented Acceptance tests of Total Power Observing in August. Now fixed, and team has gotten sufficient data to proceed with acceptance.
    • ALMA Status Report Due out this month. Will present observing/data delivery status; remaining hours as function of LST, grade, configuration; proto-capabilities (& timeline) for Cy3; status of TP acceptance.
    • Observing Status: have completed 9 ES blocks thus far (see attached pdf).
      • Cycle 2 HP Projects: 353 projects in total. 111 (31%) with some SBs finished, 42 (12%) with some data delivered; 8 (2%) completely delivered.
        • 290 OUSs observed; 269 nominally finished (means 21=7% are "stale" - some data, but not finished before long baseline campaign)
        • Of 292 finished OUS: 72 delivered + 193 being processed + 4 waiting for assignment
      • Cycle 1 HP Projects: 198 projects in total. 139 (70%) with some SBs finished, 117 (59%) with some data delivered; 57 (29%) completely delivered.
        • 492 OUSs observed (includes filler); 443 nominally finished (means 49=10% are "stale" - some data, but not finished before long baseline campaign)
        • Of 443 finished OUS: 357 delivered + 80 being processed + 6 waiting for assignment
      • Looking ahead: 360 hrs (12-m Array only) obtained over 9 ES sessions. 1400 of Cy2 HP and 270hr of Cy1 remain (1670hr total). 25 ES sessions remain in Cy2, meaning we need to obtain a 60% observing efficiency for the remainder of Cy2 (compared to 50% target and 33% thus far). Not out of the question (was obtained a few times at end of Cy1).
    • PL-assisted data reduction has started (news item to appear shortly). JAO runs all PL-compatible projects through PL. ARCs handle projects that are not PL-compatible (high frequency/low S/N; polarization; data combination) and those that fail PL run. Off to a rough start, but hope the spigot turns on soon (61 NA datasets are in queue). Our goal is to get these to PIs before December (in time for the ALMA Science meeting in Tokyo)
    • Cycle 3 planning:
      • Call/Deadline in Mar/Apr next year; panel meetings June; observing starts Oct1. 12mo cycle, so will be close to yearly cadence
      • Cycle 3 proto-capabilities (TBC): 40 antennas, longer baselines (frequency dependent), FDM polarization. Go/no-go decision on these will be made on Dec1. Request to remove SG limitations was decided to be lower priority, so these 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:
      • Cycle 1: 29 projects completed and delivered & 35 with partial deliveries; 163 SBs delivered; 2 projects in the manual queue
      • Cycle 2: 4 projects completed and delivered & 14 with partial deliveries; 28 SBs delivered; 3 projects in the manual queue
  3. Astronomer Outreach
  4. Date of next meeting
    • 20 Nov 2014
    • Proposed dates for 2014 telecons: 20 Nov
  5. Other Business

Science Corner

  1. Memos and papers of note
    • For NA, in Cycle 0 there were 36 highly ranked proposals (31 with 'some good data delivered') and 5 lesser ranked (filler) proposals (3 with 'some good data delivered'). As of September, 33 papers have been produced from data from 15 highly ranked projects and two filler projects. Among these, thirteen papers from four projects were in the 'Cosmology' category, four papers from four projects were in the 'Galaxies' category, twelve papers from ten projects in the 'ISM & Star Formation' Category and there were four papers from two projects in the stellar evolution Category. Unpublished projects include 8 Cosmology, 3 Galaxies, 6 ISM and one Stellar evolution, the Sun and the solar system. The most (56) citations have been garnered by the cosmology papers (project 958), those dealing with disks (70 for Boley et al and Qi et al). 151 published refereed ALMA papers, 39 from SV, 111 from Cycle 0 and 3 from Cycle 1/DDT.
  2. Press Releases Recent tip sheet
  3. ALMA Papers (choose ALMA)

Events of Interest

2014
 
 
 
 
 

7 Oct 2014
 
ASAC f2f Meeting
Charlottesville
 
10 Oct 2014
 
NAASC Workshop on Filaments
Charlottesville
 
7 Dec 2014
 
ALMA Symposium
Tokyo
 
13 Dec 2014
 
ALMA Postdoc Symposium
Mitaka
 
4-8 Jan 2015
 
AAS 225
Seattle
 
March 2015
 
Cycle 3 Call for Proposals
 
April 2015
 
Cycle 3 Deadline
 
June 2015
 
Cycle 3 panel meetings
 
July 2015
 
Cycle 3 results to PIs
 
Oct 1 2015
 
Start of Cycle 3 observing seasons
 

See also google calendars:
  1. ALMA Science Meetings
  2. ALMA Training Events

-- AlWootten - 2014-09-24
Topic attachments
I Attachment Action Size Date Who Comment
AEDM_2014-058-O_Approved_ASAC_Charges_-_October_2014_Meeting.pdfpdf AEDM_2014-058-O_Approved_ASAC_Charges_-_October_2014_Meeting.pdf manage 54 K 2014-10-01 - 14:39 AlWootten ASAC Charges for Charlottesville Meeting.
ASAC_Agenda__TWiki.pdfpdf ASAC_Agenda__TWiki.pdf manage 89 K 2014-10-01 - 14:24 AlWootten ASAC Agenda Oct 2014 Charlottesville
ASACf2fdox.zipzip ASACf2fdox.zip manage 2 MB 2014-10-01 - 14:35 AlWootten ASAC Documents Oct 2014 Charlottesville
Cy2ES.pdfpdf Cy2ES.pdf manage 122 K 2014-10-02 - 13:29 JohnHibbard Cycle 2 Early Science observing summary
LB_SergioOtarola_nrao.jpgjpg LB_SergioOtarola_nrao.jpg manage 93 K 2014-09-24 - 12:17 AlWootten ALMA antennas on distant pads
Topic revision: r13 - 2014-10-02, AlWootten
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