2011-02-17 ALMA Calibration Group Telecon Agenda and Minutes


ALMA Calibration Group Telecon
  • Date: March 17, 2011 (Thursday)
  • Time: 15:00 UT
  • Duration: 1.0 hr
  • USA Toll Free Number: 877-940-1273
  • International: +1-517-466-6602
  • Passcode: 5 6 6 4 7 9 4
  • Leader: JeffMangum

Table of Contents:



Agenda and Minutes

NOTE: Discussion from the telecon is shown in italic.


Attendees

  1. Richard Hills
  2. JeffMangum
  3. Bojan Nikolic
  4. LeonardoTesti
  5. Mel Wright


Amplitude Calibration Source Discussion

See the 2010-12-09 meeting minutes for background on this issue. In summary, there has been some recent work on the problem of finding viable amplitude calibration sources which will allow ALMA to meet its absolute amplitude calibration specification. See the amplitude calibration source wiki page for further information. This work has resulted in a renewed focus on the potential for giant stars as flux calibration standards. It would be useful to get an update from AIV/CSV regarding progress on the plan submitted by Martin Cohen and Jeff Mangum to conduct test measurements of some of the brighter giant stars.

Asteroids: LeonardoTesti notes that there is an asteroid monitoring project being carried-out at APEX. Goal is to study light curves.

Richard Hills notes that Planck characterization of planetary fluxes will provide useful input to use of planets as absolute flux calibrators.

Ancilliary Measurement Devices

Weather Station (P,T,RH,Ws,Wd) Instrumentation

Atmospheric Temperature Profiler (BojanNikolic)

  • Acceptance: LeonardoTesti notes that a successful acceptance meeting was held for this device. A few AIs to contend with, but no major problems raised. Need now to figure out how to use these measurements in the ALMA system.
  • Measurements: BojanNikolic notes:
    • Profiler is making continuous measurements.
    • Need to figure out how to ingest these measurements into the archive.
    • Richard Hills asked if the firmware currently in-place has the appropriate neural network for deriving temperature profiles for the ALMA site. BojanNikolic confirms this.
    • Richard Hills notes that we should still do radiosonde checks of these measurements. Perhaps CCAT site studies will provide some relevant information that can be applied to this question.

Calibrator Database Development

  • See the ASA Catalogues wiki for suggested calibrator database content (developed in collaboration with EVLA).
  • Any comments from CSV on recent calibrator database development?

Date of Next Phone Meeting

Tentative date for next ALMA Calibration Group telecon will be 2011, March 17th 15:00 UT.

-- JeffMangum - 2011-02-14
Topic revision: r2 - 2011-02-17, JeffMangum
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