Contact Information

• 2007-November-7 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 October meeting. Minutes are unavailable. 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

A view of many of the antennas at the OSF, taken Halloween. Vertex in the foreground, Melco antennas in the background. See other images and animations. See other images.

The ALMA Board visits Vertex Antenna No 1 on Halloween.

1. Project news/updates
   • Board meeting news and construction progress. Please see attachment file at bottom of agenda. (Hills)
   • CSV Jobs. Commissioning Scientist Santiago Positions, ARC Positions NRAO ESO open.
   • ALMA Safety Requirements
2. Board Communications
   • ASAC Report to the ALMA Board 30-31 October 2007 (Cernicharo)
     • Presentation to Board (Hills)
     • DRAFT Response from Board (Hills)
   • Operations Plan Version D (Hills)
     • ALMA Ops Plan, vers D (pdf)
   • Status of New Charges from Board, to be reflected upon at 1-2 February 2008 meeting at the ALMA Operations Support Facility, near San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. (Hills)
   • Dates of Board Meetings 2007
     • FtfDates
   • Dates of Board Meetings 2008
     • Dates of ASAC Meetings 2008
     • FtfdatesSpring
     • FtfdatesFall
3. Science IPT Report (Wootten, Testi, Morita)
   • Project Scientist Report to ALMA Board
   • Current Science IPT Schedule. Current Operations Schedule. IPS Pictorial View(2007 July 31). optical pointing at OSF by Nov 2007; radiometric pointing in early 2008
   • ALMA Science IPT wiki page
   • Letter to NRAO/ALMA/EVLA Scientific Adivisory committees on CASA beta release

To the chairs of the ALMA, EVLA and NRAO Science Advisory Committees:
Jose Cernicharo <cerni@damir.iem.csic.es> (ASAC),
Jose Manuel Afonso <jafonso@oal.ul.pt> (ESAC),
Kotaro Kohno <kkohno@ioa.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp> (EASAC),
Andrew Baker <ajb@astro.umd.edu> (ANASAC),
David Helfand <djh@astro.columbia.edu> (SAGE),
Roger Brissenden <rjb@head.cfa.harvard.edu> (EVLA Advisory Committee),
Tracy Clark (NRAO Users Committee);

As detailed in the latest NRAO newsletter
(http://www.nrao.edu/news/newsletters/nraonews113.pdf), there was a beta
release of the CASA (Common Astronomy Software Applications) offline
software system in October 2007. This software has been under
development in support of the ALMA and EVLA projects, and is intended to
also be of general use for radio astronomy data post-processing. This
version has significant capabilities required by the ALMA and EVLA
projects, but is still under very active development. It will support
the import of data in a number of formats, and a reasonably full set of
processing capabilities (see the beta release notes
http://casa.nrao.edu/betarelease_notes.shtml for more information on
supported observing modes and data formats).

Since the NRAO and ALMA Regional Centers (ARCs) are not yet staffed to
support a large number of user queries, we have decided on a staged
release of user support for the Beta. Therefore, initially (through
early 2008) access to the Beta will be restricted to ALMA and EVLA
project personnel and a limited number of users drawn from our
scientific advisory committees. During this period, CASA User Support
Specialists will be trained in the use of CASA in order to provide
timely and responsive support, and in turn these specialists will train
others as needed. In 2008 we plan to gradually expand the availability
of the Beta to others in the community as our user support capabilities
ramp up.

We ask that you designate up to three (3) members of your committee (or
their designees, e.g. postdocs working in their stead) as CASA Beta
testers. These testers will be sent instructions on how to register for
the Beta and obtain user support. We expect that they will exercise the
advertised capabilities of CASA (as documented in the CASA Cookbook) and
provide feedback to the projects via the CASA helpdesk. Your
participation in the evaluation of the package and our user support will
be invaluable in helping us prepare for the larger scientific community.

Please send the names and emails of your designated testers to
casahelp@nrao.edu at your earliest convenience.

Further details on the Beta release policy and software capabilities are
available at http://casa.nrao.edu/betarelease.shtml.

- Nicole Radziwill (AD, Office of End to End Operations)
   Claire Chandler (Deputy AD for NM Operations; for EVLA user support)
   John Hibbard (North American ALMA Regional Center)
   Paola Andreani (European ALMA Regional Center)
   Ken Tatematsu (East Asian ALMA Regional Center)

1. Outreach
   • Astronomer Outreach: NRAO Newsletter ESO Newsletter NAOJ News. NRAO ALMA Calendar ALMA Construction Picture Gallery
   • ESAC Report (Afonso)
   • ANASAC Report (Blain)
   • EASAC Report (Kohno)
2. AOB
3. Next Meeting 2008-January-9-14:30 UT suggested. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

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
	Oct 30-31	all day	ALMA Board	f2f	San Pedro de Atacama
	Nov 1-2	all day	AMAC f2f Meeting	f2f	Santiago
	Nov 13-15	all day	ALMA Production Workshop	f2f	Charlottesville
	Dec 6	1430UT	ALMA Board	telecon
	Jan 9 2008	1430UT	ASAC telecon	telecon
	Feb 1-2	all day	ASAC f2f Meeting	f2f	Chile

Upcoming Meetings

North American URSI meeting Jan 3-6 2008, Boulder

AAS meeting Jan 7-11 2008, Austin, Tx (NRAO/ALMA booth)

IAU Symposium 251 Organic Matter in Space Feb 18-22, Hong Kong

See also NAASC listing

-- AlWootten - 05 Nov 2007