Revised 05/05/05 CW
Present:
Testi
C. Wilson
Turner
Mundy
Carilli
van Dishoeck
Mardones
Momose
Wootten
Emerson
Richer
T. Wilson
Laing
1. Old Business
Minutes from last meeting are written but not yet posted; will be posted
on web page for this meeting later this week; please check them
- Project news/updates (Wootten/T. Wilson)
- only two weeks since last ASAC telecon (it was delayed to be after Board
face-to-face meeting) so not a lot of new news
- expect announcement on antennas June 23 (after Board meeting)
- first Band 6 receiver put into cryostat, cooled down; beginning beam tests
- with Band 3 receiver in Victoria, testing saturation level of mixer last week
- call for tenders for OSF issued
- foundation package for AOS in hand, construction should start in August
- site characterization instruments lived through last weeks big snowfall
- ESO STC had discussions about antennas
- big item is ESO finance committee meeting next week
- European ALMA newsletter came out last week
LT: news about rebaselining?
AW - Board will deal with antenna contracts and rebaselining at June
face-to-face meeting; rebaselining expected to take effect June 30
- in U.S., NSF needs to find $20M to fund large optical telescope design;
scrutinizing everything, including ALMA Operations;
- two things happening here: (1) senior review to
happen in July -- will review ALL radio observatories with an eye to cutting
back and closing things to make room for ALMA ops and large optical
telescope development (2) in October/November will be an invasive audit
of ALMA; have had one before, of MMA in 1999 (that was where the
need for nutators came from)
CW: what's happening with Band 5?
TW: EU in February said can negotiate; wanted to see papers before negotiate
(by April 1); now are revising those papers; deep into discussions with
software/receiver people in ALMA: how will it fit into ALMA, make sure doesn't
slow down anything else, make sure are no open questions before start
negotiating with EU
- scope is 8 Band 5 Rx; also asked for software to allow exact
correction of phase to very high degree; also asked for OTF interferometry
to rapidly map large areas before weather changed; these are the parts
of the original proposal that survivied; capped requeste from 12.5M to
8.5M Euros
- Board Communications (Turner, Testi)
* Response to our report
LT - board telecon last week (JT,LT,AW attended); agenda quite busy so no
discussion of response to our report
AW - thinks will be a written response after next Board telecon
* New Charges
- Board telecon realized need new charges; want a report for Nov meeting so
ASAC to meet September; Richard Wade considers our input from last
time sufficient to write draft charge to be discussed Board telecon end
of May
- last time two things we discussed were (1) old charge 2 from last meeting
possibly linked to demonstration science (2) science verification plan if
more complete version is available
EvD - once decision on AN is reached, will look at rest of project; may still
be a charge on rebaselining that comes to us
LT - may have to wait to see the response to our report?
CW - don't see need to add charge on rebaselining now; can add it at any
time i.e. if looks like it is needed after June 30; for any charge in this
area we will get the information from the project at the last minute, in
any case
* Face-to-face meeting--dates
Constraints:
TW - heads of IPT meeting Chile Sept 26-30
CW - Astrochemistry meeting August 29-Sept 2
JT - UCLA quarter starts late September (last week usually)
LT - JT to look into the hotel i.e. can we do face-to-face in LA
CW - AW to set up calendar of people's availability?
- Science IPT Report (Wootten/Wilson)
- John Conway moving ahead on configuration design, hoping new one by May 15;
finished with compact configuration; in the midst of optimizing intermediate
arrays now
- spirited discussion on nutator requirements on the wiki; Al will write a
summary up soon and put on ALMA EDM
- design for patch panel that connects to correlator, sub-array capability
and use, science IPT writing response to JAO; no change to recommendation
for number of subarrays expected
- final stages of going over ancillary calibration equipment document and
making sure all recommended instruments in WBS and accord with spares policy
- Partin-Pintado is pushing ahead with last tests of semi-transparent
vane for amplitude calibration
LT: is it true that ACA correlator is not as flexible as baseline correlator
plus tunable filters? i.e. not all modes available with both?
RL: he's trying to find out; this is a major issue that has come up as part of
the ACA review; document from Japanese is coming
- Astronomer Outreach:
* ESAC Report (van Dishoeck)
- not much to report; long telecon 2 weeks ago; mostly informing non-ASAC
members about what had happened at ASAC/ALMA Board meetings; informational
meeting; some feedback from STC meeting (already reported by TW), some
on European ARC organization; quite a lot of discussion on this, but looks
like going ahead as planned; main step is hiring of ARC manager in ESO,
advertizement out for this
- 1st workshop: had very successful S-Z workshop in Paris last month (lots of
X-ray and optical observers too); still a strong science case for Band 1
for ALMA; some presentations on web site for meeting
- 2nd workshop: Galactic/Extragalactic modelling: October, 2005 Sweden; Aalto
is organizing, contact her if interested
- 3rd workshop: line surveys with ALMA; planned for spring 2006
- TW gave presentation on ALMA at ESO Users Committee meeting; first time
he's been asked; they want to have regular presentations/updates at their
meetings from now on; large committee
* ANASAC Report (Carilli)
- ANASAC had a telecon last week; number of questions about Band 5 proposal
i.e. how are these decisions made, how are they counted against the project,
etc.
- one question that came up was leeway to change contribution; does it have
to go to Band 5 or could it be something else?
TW: locked into Band 5; discussion of how this will be counted (i.e.
+ for Europe?) has not arisen;
EvD: proposal came up because unique
opportunity to obtain funding; line of funding was for enhancements to
projects in construction; ALMA project was informed at very early stage
- had discussion about NRC report on ALMA led by JT; JT: she assumes the letter
has gone in by now; they had Mark Holdaway doing simulations; Mark Reid
seemed to be writing section on image fidelity and has good feel for
limitations of simulations
CC: did extragalactic science ever get even a cursory nod?
EvD: Blandford
said comments she sent were very helpful (on both
disks and extgal); he said have finished report and it is now under review
CC: will we ever see it? JT: she doesn't know; she'll be at a meeting third
week of May and she can find out; doesn't think are always made public ...
- will have face-to-face ANASAC meeting in June; question was whether ANASAC
will just get info or will have input into the process i.e. rebaselining,
antennas, etc.
AW: ASAC report reflects whole ALMA community; would be useful
to have the NA community endorse the report, or if not the whole thing, say
which bit disagree with, etc.; would be very useful
LT: in Europe, the ESAC reviews and discusses the charges before the ASAC
meeting, so that the European members of ASAC can bring the consensus
opinion to the ASAC discussions; it would be useful if ANASAC could adopt
a similar procedure
- discussed new membership and new chairman; will go through chair in
Cambridge; new members are Ho, Brogan, Baker, Balley, Wright, Williams
- NRAO building is finished and ALMA people have moved into new offices
5. Next Meeting 2005-June-7 14:30 UT
--
AlWootten - 05 May 2005