2011-04-14 ALMA Calibration Group Telecon Agenda and Minutes


ALMA Calibration Group Telecon
  • Date: April 14, 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. Martin Cohen
  2. Stuartt Corder
  3. EdFomalont
  4. Ruediger Knessel
  5. Harvey Liszt
  6. JeffMangum
  7. AlWootten


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.

Giant Stars:

  • Stuartt notes that the giant star test measurements submitted by Martin Cohen and JGM are still in the queue. Prospects for getting these observed in the next one to two months are good.
  • Rudiger wondered whether it would be better to observe Bands 7 and 9 (and 6?) rather than Band 3. Apparently the performance of the higher frequency bands is significantly better than spec. Martin agrees that doing the higher frequency bands rather than Band 3 would be a better choice given this new information.
  • Rudiger notes that if we do Band 9 this can be compared to Planck/Herschel.

Ancilliary Measurement Devices

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

No new news on this topic. Al notes that installation of the production weather stations is being tracked on JIRA at AIVMAN-2519.

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.

No new news on this topic.

Calibrator Database Development

Date of Next Phone Meeting

Tentative date for next ALMA Calibration Group telecon will be 2011, May 12th 15:00 UT.

-- JeffMangum - 2011-04-07
Topic revision: r3 - 2011-04-14, JeffMangum
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