ALMA

Contact Information

  • 2007-October-5 14:30 UT
  • Duration: 1 hr
  • USA Toll Free Number: 877-874-1919
  • Toll Number: +1-203-320-9891
  • Passcode: 185064
  • Leader: Al Wootten

Old Business

  1. Agenda, Minutes: Agenda of September meeting. Minutes are available. Agenda and Minutes of older telecons may be viewed at the ALMA EDM site Sitescape or more recently at the Board ASAC site.
  2. ASAC Membership

New Business

And then there were four... Panel tiers 2, 3 and 4 are mounted on the Vx antenna at the OSF. Antenna No 2 should arrive in Chile 2007 Sept 8. See other images and animations. See other images.

The first fringes achieved with the tunable filter banks at the ATF.  Full polarization, 2048 lags/channels.  Note coherent phase across the band in the bottom-right plot.  The vertical lines every 62.5 Mhz illustrates a known problem with stitching between the sub-bands. Phase is not coherent at the boundaries of the sub-bands. At the ATF, the AEC brake and ACU issues have been resolved and static fringes on Mercury have been demonstrated with the new 2-antenna correlator and preproduction backends. Thanks to everyone for getting the ATF back into operation, especially Jack Meadows for fixing the AEC brakes, and Gene DuVall and Peter Napier for demonstrating fringes. All fringes were achieved using the new pointing model determined by Darrel Emerson and Jeff Mangum; onee does not need to adjust the pointing over time now since the new model is better than the previous one.

  1. Project news/updates
    • Board meeting news (Tarenghi)
    • Construction progress (Beasley at another meeting; an alternate reporter will be arranged)
    • ALMA Safety Requirements
  2. Board Communications
    • Toshikazu Onishi joins the ASAC next month, taking the place of Satoshi Yamamoto. For the last eight years we have benefitted from the insight Yamamoto-san has brought to the ASAC, culminating with his gracious hospitality in hosting the ASAC last May in Tokyo. Thank you Yamamoto-san!
    • Charges from Board Meeting for October 2007 response (Hills/Wootten)
      • 1. Assess the preparation of the ALMA real time, observing, and off-line software for early science. In particular, review the impact of the recommendations of the recent software review and the schedule for the next two years. Response to be delivered for 1-2 April Board meeting.
      • 2. Revisit the question from April, 2007 of important correlator requirements for early science operations. In particular prioritizing the order of development of software modes. Compare broad early science requirements to correlator modes. Which modes enable the majority of the science? What other capabilities are important? Response to be delivered for 30-31 October Board meeting.
      • 3. Review the calibration plan and scientific aspects of Assembly, Integration, Verification testing and for Commissioning. Being mindful of the finite resources (human, financial) available, are changes necessary or desirable for scientific reasons to the plans being implemented? Response to be delivered for 30-31 October Board meeting.
        • The most recent version of the Commissioning Plan is available.
        • Note a similar charge was addressed in the Sept 2006 Report. The Board responded to the Report in February 2007: Again the Board is pleased to learn that the ASAC was generally happy with the planning for ALMA calibration and that the report on the progress of the WVR tests with the SMA is encouraging. The search for a fully satisfactory amplitude and flux density calibration scheme has, of course, engaged many experts over the years and ALMA must continue its efforts in this area. Although this problem has engaged the project from the early beginnings, the Board expects that the employment of extra personnel and, in particular, that of a full-time Project Scientist who will interact directly with the ASAC on these matters, will provide new momentum to solving these problems. Here are readings provided the ASAC in Sept 2006:
        • Calibration Plan: Current version of the calibration plan and associated documents ("examples", "roadmaps", "matrices", etc.) posted. Comments welcome.
        • Calibration Examples: The "meat" of the Calibration Plan. Review of these documents nearly complete.
        • Cal Plan Assignments

      • Looking to the future, the Board anticipates that ASAC will be asked when appropriate to consider, e.g., a) the progress of the ARCs and their plans for early science support. Is the planned level of readiness and support appropriate for non-expert users?; b) the Operations Plan as accepted by the Board following input of the external reviews and of the JAO; and c) when further work by the Science IPT is available, the imaging capability of ALMA in its three modes: 12-m array, ACA and full ALMA. SIPT will need to provide images with a full range of spatial scales to explore the scientific basis for choosing which of the three modes to use for a given project.
      • Proposed Schedule
        • 19 Sep ESAC f2f meeting?
        • 21 Sep First draft submissions due
        • 6 Oct EASAC f2f meeting?
        • 15 Oct Nominal date for written report to be sent to Board Secretary
        • 29 Oct Director's Council, ALMA Budget Committee and Personnel Committee meet in Santiago
        • 29 Oct Board travels to San Pedro de Atacama (evening)
        • 30 Oct Board meeting (probably ASAC Report from Cernicharo though as yet not detailed)
        • 31 Oct Board meeting
        • 1 Nov Board returns to Santiago and home
        • 7 Nov ASAC telecon
    • Dates of Board Meetings 2007
    • Dates of Board Meetings 2008
  3. Science IPT Report (Wootten, Testi, Morita)
  4. Outreach
  5. AOB
  6. Next Meeting 2007-October-3-14:30 UT suggested.

Science Corner:

Talks from the recent Disks Conference in Charlottesville: Transformational Science with ALMA: Through Disks to Stars and Planets

Calendar

Official JAO Calendar

Events of Interest

(see also Al's ALMA Biweekly Calendar)

2007
 
 
 
 
 
Day Date Time Event location details
 
Sep 27-28
all day
B3 CDR
f2f
Victoria
 
Oct 1-2
all day
B6 CDR
f2f
Cville
Fri
Oct 5
1430UT
ASAC telecon
telecon
 
Mon
Oct 29
all day
Board Prep
f2f
Santiago
 
Oct 30-31
all day
ALMA Board
f2f
San Pedro de Atacama
 
Nov 1-2
all day
AMAC f2f Meeting
f2f
Santiago

Upcoming Meetings

North American URSI meeting July 22-26, Ottawa; Emerson, Reid attending.

ALMA Community Meeting and the Workshop on Surveys for ALMA 3-6 Sept, Garching. Testi, Laing attending, perhaps others.

Astrophysics in the Next Decade: JWST and Concurrent Facilities September 24-27, 2007, Tucson Arizona Wootten, Testi, Brogan attending.

See also NAASC listing

-- AlWootten - 20 Sep 2007
Topic revision: r1 - 2007-09-20, AlWootten
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