Here are Onishi-san's notes:

ASAC Telecon memo 8th July 2009

Attending: Bally, Kelsey Johnston, Blain, Hogerheijde, Kuno, Kohno, Onishi, Nagar, Hills, Wooten, Morita, Nyman, Peck, Laing.

Apologies: Baker

  1. Project report (Hills)
    • Achievement of dynamic fringes at the OSF
    • Brief status report: https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/pub/ALMA/ASAC8July09Agenda/ALMA_Status_July09.pdf
    • Scan of Jupiter at 690GHz (PM03) with single dish mode in July 2009
    • WVR sky dip at OSF: 0.75mm of water molecule
    • First "proper" fringe on 12th June 2009
    • Reviewed recent major items
    • There was a question: What about a schedule of Front-end?
  2. Schedule (Hills)
  3. Reviews
    • Review of the CSV Plans
      • On September 2nd and 3rd at the OSF chaired by Bob Wilson
      • Each regional SAC nominates a person to be the panel member
      • ESAC Raphael Moreno
      • EASAC will be discussed in JSAC f2f next week
      • ANASAC Mel Wright
    • Implementation Plan for Operations
      • On September 29th and 30th in Santiago
      • External review by 4 panel members
      • The panel members will be chosen by Thijs and Nyman
    • Systems Requirements Review
      • Series of small focused meeting
    • The revised version of the scientific requirements document has to be discussed and approved by ASAC
      • The revised version will be delivered by 20th Sep for the regional discussion before ASAC f2f
    • Proposal Review Process
      • Still discussing in ALMA Board
      • There are some issues to be resolved
      • No clear picture of how the time allocation will be operated in Chile
      • After the main scientific time allocation is done, what further mechanism is there in place before final time assignment
      • How to assure appropriate time share among partners
      • The plan should be completed(?) by Board f2f in Nov.
      • Official document approved by Board should be delivered to ASAC well before ASAC f2f
      • Suggested deliver date: 20th Sep.
  4. Items for discussion
  5. Development plan:
    • Decadal review in the US is underway. Some of the plans are already moving.
    • Phasing-up ALMA for VLBI
      • Budget application to NSF is being planned and the group asks ALMA support possibly by the Board
        • Making detailed observations of Sgr A - detecting the motion of gas
        • Bonn is also involved in this project?
        • About 3-year program
        • ASAC should decide whether we support this plan or not
      • Announcement of opportunity in NA for funding for projects - "stimulus" funding
        • Dead-line: 10th Aug. (Note in the event this opportunity was not appropriate for this proposal.)
      • Do ALMA regard the science to be done with VLBA by phasing up ALMA as being of high importance?
      • To have a statement of support from Board for the application, ASAC needs to write something for the Board.
        • Comments: Depends on how the application looks like. The impact on the normal ALMA has to be investigated. How to allocate the observation time to the project? Japanese group has also interest in VLBI by ALMA.
        • Suggestion by Richard:
          1. Richard will ask Haystack people for outline of the plan to be circulated to ASAC
          2. EASAC should discuss current status of their VLBI plans
          3. Ask Haystack people to contact east-asian VLBI people?
      • ASAC action should be done before ~25th July. Board telecon will be on 30 July. (Note - again this all moved later.)
    • Missing receiver Bands
      • Band 1 and Band 5: A lot of discussions are now going on.
      • Band 1 Workshop in Manchester on 14th and 15th September
      • Band 5 Redshifted atomic carbon line, low-redshifted water line.
      • Science meeting planned toward the end of the year for the kick off. Opacity at OSF: tau ~ 1
    • More Antennae?
      • There is still possibility getting one or two antennas.
    • Absolute calibration
      • Very sensitive SIS mixers are not linear, difficult to carry out absolute calibration measurements.
      • Current ALMA specifications for calibration accuracy, ~5% absolute and 1% relative, seems to be difficult.
      • On agenda for the next telecon or f2f
  6. Board Charges
    • No official charges yet, although only minor modification are expected.
    • Will be discussed in Board telecon on 30 July
  7. Regional report
    • Europe(Laing)
      • Band 5 discussion
      • New style ESAC meeting which is now a subcommittee of the ESO science and technology committee
      • Tacconi is the new chair.
    • ANASAC(Blain)
      • Preparation for September meeting in Charlottesville at ALMA science center.
      • Decadal panel discussion taking place
    • East Asia PS (Morita)
      • Workshop celebrating retirement of Ishiguro-san
      • Antenna evaluation work is on-going by NAOJ.
    • North America PS(Wootten)
      • Also working towards conditional acceptance of more antennas
      • Major NFS review at Charlottesville coming up.
    • EASAC (Onishi)
      • Term of Kohno-san will expire next month. New ASAC member is approved in EASAC, and waiting for an approval from ALMA Board. The information of the new member will be sent to Richard from Onishi.
  8. AOB
    • What is the status of the development plan which was one of the Board charges.
      • Board did not make any decisions about what they wanted to do next on this matter.
      • Urgent thing was for decadal review, which was done by Al Wootten.
      • VLBI, Band 1, Band 5 have come up to the surface are moving
      • What is the good way forward? More discussion is needed for the next step.
  9. Next Meeting
    • 2009 Sept 9th 13:30 UT

-- RichardHills - 2009-09-08
Topic revision: r1 - 2009-09-08, RichardHills
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