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Contact Information

• 2009-July-08 13:30 UT
• Note: Line noise may be muted by pressing *6 which works thru the call center.
• Duration: 1 hr
• USA Toll Free Number: 877-874-1919
• Toll Number: +1-203-320-9891
• Passcode: 185064
• Leader: Richard Hills

Old Business

1. Agenda, Minutes: Agenda of May meeting. Informal notes are available. Agenda and Minutes of older telecons may be viewed at the ALMA EDM site Sitescape.

New Business

1. Membership (Hills)
   • The Board have approved that Toshikazu Onishi should take over as Chair of ASAC from 1st July 2009.
   • Our thanks to Susanne Aalto and Pepe Cernicharo who have rotated off the ASAC.
   • The ESO Council has appointed Linda Taconni and Rob Ivison as the new European members; the Board concurred.
2. Project Report
   • The ALMA Board congratulated the project on the achievement of dynamic fringes at the OSF, using the complete suite of production sub-systems, both hardware and software.
   • See also other images.
   • Here is a brief status report ALMA_Status_July09
   • Much more detail can be found in ALMA Monthly Reports
3. Schedule: IPFschematic_2009-2010__090630.pdf
   • We remain close to being on track for having three antennas operating at the high site before the end of the year. Problems and small delays are however accumulating and we will have to maintain a careful balance between taking short-cuts to stay on schedule and not taking the equipment up until we are really ready.
   • For the longer term we are working towards a goal of having 66 antennas and associated systems completed by the end of 2012. The schedule to achieve this is under great pressure. The most problematic item continues to be the acceptance testing of both the antennas and the front ends.
4. Change Requests
   • These continue to be of a minor and technical nature. There is an effort to clear up old ones that have been sitting in the queue for a long time, some of which are quite important.
5. Reviews.
   • The review of the CSV Plans will take place at the OSF on September 2nd and 3rd and will be chaired by Bob Wilson.
   • The Implementation Plan for Operations will take place on September 29th and 30th in Santiago.
   • The (final?) Systems Requirements Review will now be a rolling event. I am sorry to say that the revised version of the Scientific Requirements document is still not ready for ASAC. The above reviews have higher priority.
6. Items for discussion
   • Development plans, in particular the prospects for phasing-up ALMA for VLBI and the status of the missing receiver bands;
     • Development_headings
     • Presentation by AW to NRAO
   • Absolute calibration: i.e. finding the fluxes of sources from first principles.
7. Discussion of Board Charges. These are the current (draft) charges:
   1. Continue to monitor the readiness of the ALMA software system. The archive, the interface between the observing tool and the archive, and the capture of necessary proposal information by the observing tool, in the context of ALMA operations planning, are of special interest at present.
   2. Continue to review the progress and schedule of the AIV/CSV process, especially with respect to Early Science. The Board would appreciate a report on the plans and procedures set up by the Project Scientists for `Demonstration Science', and on the revised specifications for science requirements.
   3. Review the status of the plans for the proposal review process, in particular whether all the necessary software and procedures will be established and tested in readiness for the Call for Proposals for Early Science.
   4. Review the preparedness of the ARCs to support early science proposals and the ALMA helpdesk, and review the materials they have prepared to reach out to their communities to encourage early science proposals, and to inform their communities about realistic capabilities and performance.
   • Other ASAC activities which are not formal charges from the Board.
   1. Community sounding on expectations for early science, and ALMA information resources for the general community.
   2. Continuing discussion and analysis of future ALMA developments.
   3. ASAC will continue to look for ways in which ALMA construction and operations might be more environmentally friendly, especially in terms of energy use (without compromising science). (Issues of energy use are discussed in the Marshall et al. Decadal Survey white paper at http://low-energy-astro.physics.ucsb.edu/Marshall_Energy_APP_EPO_IPP_FFP_DEM.pdf)
8. Status Report: Proposal Review Process
9. Reports from regional Project Scientists (Testi, Morita, Wootten)
10. and from the advisory committees:
    • ESAC Report (Tacconi)
    • ANASAC Report (Blain)
    • EASAC Report (Kohno)
11. Astronomer Outreach: ESO Newsletter , New ALMA/JAO website, NRAO Newsletter ALMA News. NAOJ News. NRAO ALMA Calendar
12. AOB
13. Next Meeting
    • Next telecon 2009 Sept 9th(?) Draft_ASAC_Meetings_Schedule_2009.pdf
    • Dates of Board Meetings 2009

Science Corner:

Calendar

Day	Date	Time	Event	location	details
2007

	Jul 15-17		NSF Review	Cville
	Sep 2-3		CSV Review	OSF
	Sep 9?		ASAC Telecon
	Sep 21-25		Assembly, Gas Content and Star Formation History of Galaxies	Ch'ville
	Oct 13-14		ASAC f2f	Garching

Events of Interest

(see also Al's ALMA Biweekly Calendar)

Upcoming Meetings

IAU, Rio de Janerio, Brazil 3-14 Aug 2009

Assembly, Gas Content and Star Formation History of Galaxies Ch'ville Sep 21-25

See ALMA related meetings.

-- AlWootten - 2009-07-01