ALMA;

Contact Information

  • 2010-July-15 14:30 UT
  • Note: Line noise may be muted by pressing *6 which works thru the call center.
  • Duration: 1 hr
  • Toll Number: 1-203-480-8549
  • USA Toll Free Number: 866-600-8836
  • Passcode: 3283890
  • Leader: Richard Hills

Five Antennas at the AOS:

Five antennas front.jpg

The configuration early in June. Credit: Norikazu Mizuno © ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

Previous meeting

  1. Agenda, Minutes: Agenda.
  2. Membership. Frédéric Gueth takes over as Chair as of 1st July. The EASAC have nominated Momose-san as the second Vice-Chair.

Old Business

  1. Liaison Information Fill in the wiki please
  2. Response to the March 2010 ASAC Report
  3. The document describing the Proposal Review process has been separated into two parts as ASAC suggested. The top level document has been agreed by the Board and will be circulated after a few final tweaks. The more detailed implementation plan is being worked on and should be ready for circulation by the beginning of September.

New Business

  1. Project Report
    • I regret to say that we have had a second fatal accident on the road between the AOS and the OSF. Earlier this week a truck which had been delivering fuel to the high site went out of control on the way down and the driver was killed. As in the previous case this accident did not involve ALMA staff but an external contractor. It is nevertheless extremely upsetting that this leaves his wife on her own to care for three children. As with all the accidents that have occurred on the site a detailed investigation is being undertaken.
    • Brief status report. Here is the CSV section of the May_2010 monthly report. Full Project Reports for previous months can be found in ALMA Monthly Reports. See Science_Milestones_30june2010.pdf for 'the big picture' as of end of June.
    • DV01,DV02, DV03, DV05 and PM02 are at the AOS. Note that PM03 is present in the photo above, but it was brought down for scheduled work and PM02 has now been taken up.
      • There are presently four antennas at the OSF (DV04, DV06, DV07 and as of Tuesday, DV08). We are operating DV04 and DV07 as a test interferometer. DV06 and DV08 are going through the AIV process.
      • PM03 has been relocated to the Melco camp for upgrades to the thermal insulation on the receiver cabin.
      • The antenna locations at the AOS are shown here. Antenna Locations at AOS. We now have baselines of ~18 to 45 meters. We are calling this the "Initial Commissioning Array" configuration. This allows good tests of e.g. antenna performance at different elevations. With four antennas we have checked amplitude closure on 20 May. We expect to have 6 antennas at the AOS later in July and 8 in August.
      • The first AEM antenna is now under-going tests and the second is close behind. Try this if you have a fast link: AEM antenna.

    • We produced a summary of the Status of the Commissioning for the ALMA Board: CSV_status.
    • A paper summarizing the status of construction and commissioning was given at SPIE in San Diego is here: SPIE paper

  1. Face-to-Face meeting: Charges and preliminary discussion
    • Informative weekly meetings.
    • Information on the next face-to-face meeting in Santiago 2010 Oct 13-14
      • The CSV status review (7/8 Oct at the OSF) and the readiness review for Science Operations (11/12 Oct in Santiago respectively) will take place immediately before the ASAC meeting (13/14 Oct, also in Santiago). The plan is that three members of the ASAC will attend each of these meetings.
      • We now need you to send your requirements for accommodation and visiting the site. Remember that your expenses and travel arrangements are dealt with by the Executive of the appropriate ALMA Partner, but we will be making the local arrangements.
      • It is hoped that many of you can take the time to visit the site. This would probably be most useful before the ASAC meeting but we could arrange for poeople to go afterwards if necessary. This time we expect that it will be possible for people to stay at the OSF rather than in San Pedro.
      • The meetings in Santiago will be in the new ALMA building in Vitacura and we have reserved rooms in a hotel near there.
  2. Reports from regional Project Scientists (Testi, Morita, Wootten)
    • Morita-san will be taking a new role as System Verification Scientist at the JAO from 1st August and will be moving to Chile.
    • Masao Saito, who has played a leading role in the ALMA-J antenna team and has now joined the EA ARC, will take over as Project Scientist for that region.
    • Mark McKinnon is now ALMA Project Manager for NA and ALMA Project Director for NRAO.
    • Proposal for NA ALMA Operations is being reviewed at present - the review panel is in Chile at the moment.
    • Development. Regions are developing plans for the ALMA Development process.
    • Operations Plan Version E. Status presented to Board. Will be sent to Board for November meeting.
  3. and from the advisory committees:
    • ESAC Report (Tacconi)
    • ANASAC Report (Johnson) 15-17 Jan 2011 Workshop ALMA: Extending the Limits of Astrophysical Spectroscopy; in Victoria, B. C. f2f Meeting Charlottesville 13-14 Sept 2010.
    • EASAC Report (Momose)
  4. Astronomer Outreach: Main JAO website, ESO Newsletter, NAOJ News, NRAO Newsletter, NRAO ALMA Calendar.
  5. AOB
  6. Next Meeting
    • Telecon 2010 Sep 8
    • f2f meeting 13-14 October, Chile

Science Corner:

arXiv:1005.3077 Testing the ACA Phase Correction Scheme using the SMA Authors: Satoki Matsushita (1,2), Yu-Lin Chen (1,3,4) ((1) ASIAA, (2) ALMA, (3) NTU, (4) Taipei County Yong-Ho Junior High School)

arXiv:1004.5389 Resolved images of self-gravitating circumstellar discs with ALMA Authors: P. Cossins (1), G. Lodato (2), L. Testi (3) ((1) Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, UK (2) Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita' di Milano, Italy (3) European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany)

Calendar

2010
 
 
 
 
 
 
Day
Date
Time
Event
location
details
 
 
Jul 15
 
ASAC Meeting
telecon
 
 
 
Jul 13-18
 
NAASC Operations Review
Chile
 
 
Aug
 
ALMA System Review III
TBD
 
 
Sep 13-14
 
ANASAC f2f
 
 
Oct 7-8
 
CSV Status Update
Chile
 
 
Oct 11-12
 
SciOps Readiness Review
Chile
 
 
Oct 13-14
 
ASAC f2f
 
Santiago
 
 
Oct 25-28
 
Annual ALMA External Review
Chile
 
 
Nov 10
 
Observatory Readiness Review
Chile
 
 
Nov 16-18
 
ALMA Board Meeting
Chile
 
 
Nov 22
 
Date for decision on ES
Chile
 

Events of Interest

(see also Al's ALMA Biweekly Calendar)

Upcoming Meetings

Molecules in Galaxies 26-30 July 2010, Oxford UK

Stormy Cosmos: The Evolving Interstellar Medium: Recent Progress from Space IR/Submm 1 - 4 November 2010 Pasadena, CA Hosted by the NASA Herschel Science Center, Spitzer Science Center

The Impact of Herschel Surveys on ALMA Early Science Garching, November 17-19, 2010

15-17 Jan 2011 Workshop ALMA: Extending the Limits of Astrophysical Spectroscopy in Victoria

The Molecular Universe May 30 - June 3, 2011 Toledo, Spain

-- AlWootten - 2010-07-13
Topic attachments
I Attachment Action Size Date Who Comment
7733-38_SPIE_ALMA.pdfpdf 7733-38_SPIE_ALMA.pdf manage 1 MB 2010-07-16 - 13:28 RichardHills SPIE paper
ACA_pad_occupation_7.pdfpdf ACA_pad_occupation_7.pdf manage 38 K 2010-07-14 - 21:54 RichardHills Antenna Locations at AOS
AEDM_2010-080-O_Response_to_ASAC.pdfpdf AEDM_2010-080-O_Response_to_ASAC.pdf manage 23 K 2010-07-14 - 21:12 RichardHills Response to ASAC Report March 2010
CSV_status.pdfpdf CSV_status.pdf manage 254 K 2010-07-13 - 20:53 AlWootten CSV Status Report Late June.
Five_antennas_front.jpgjpg Five_antennas_front.jpg manage 134 K 2010-07-14 - 22:18 RichardHills Five Antennas
It_moves.aviavi It_moves.avi manage 1 MB 2010-07-14 - 22:52 RichardHills AEM antenna
Science_-_May_2010.pdfpdf Science_-_May_2010.pdf manage 67 K 2010-07-13 - 20:44 AlWootten Science section of May Report, from R. Hills
Science_Milestones_30june2010.pdfpdf Science_Milestones_30june2010.pdf manage 25 K 2010-07-13 - 20:43 AlWootten Science Milestone updte; end of June
asacreport_2010_03.pdfpdf asacreport_2010_03.pdf manage 293 K 2010-07-14 - 21:22 RichardHills ASAC report March 2010
Topic revision: r5 - 2010-07-16, RichardHills
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