NAASC Organizational Meeting: Wednesday Sep 5, 1-2:30pm ET (1700-1830UT), CV-ER311/TUC-N525/Soc280(SO-conf2)

Meeting Information

• Call date: 2007-09-05 (Wednesday)
• Call time 13:00 ET or 17:00 UT
• Duration: 1.5 hr
• Non toll-free number: 434-244-6834
• USA toll-free Number: 866-675-5385
• Outside USA Number: +1 517-444-6916
• Passcode: 8445333
• Leader: Carilli

Attendees

• CV:
• Soc:
• GB:
• TUC:
• Canada:
• SCO:

Action Items from past meetings

• ACTION: Arrange for pdf of ALMA articles from NRAO Newsletter to be sent out electronically to almanews@nrao.edu
  • WHO: J. Hibbard/M. Adams -> Carilli, Adams
  • DUE: Next Issue (~July 1) -> Aug 15
  • DONE:
  • NOTE: pdf was produced by July 20. Was never sent out though.
• ACTION: Discuss idea of UVa/NAASC liason with D.O.
  • WHO: J. Hibbard
  • DUE: end of summer
  • DONE: 8/21/2007
  • NOTE: Things are in the works. Will report on this when its more finalized.
• ACTION: Move items from http://www.cv.nrao.edu/naasc/alma_meetings.shtml to Science Meetings under NAm ALMA Calendar
  • WHO: A. Remijan
  • DUE: End of summer
  • DONE: Aug 01. Please view new Meetings/Events link to make sure the events list is complete. To add to this list, enter the event in the NAASC calendar under the category "Science Meetings".
• ACTION: BG requests that RR sends email to JMcM, CB, BG about concerns on alma simulator.
  • WHO: R. Reid
  • DUE: Aug 1
  • DONE: Done -- enter JIRA ticket
• ACTION: Canadian MOU draft to NRAO; NRAO iterate
  • WHO: L. Knee/C. Carilli
  • DUE: Aug 5
  • DONE: Aug 1 -- currently under review at NRAO/AUI.
• ACTION: Need DB server for splatalog
  • WHO: Remijan -- talk to E2E
  • DUE: Aug 15
  • DONE: Aug 15. On order.

Agenda

• NAASC News (Carilli/Hibbard)
  • Recently produced 2007 Summary, 2008 Program Plan, Long-range Plan (2008-2012). Extensive list of 243 milestones available. Put links to all these here?
  • Hibbard attending ARC Manager f2f, EU ALMA Days this week.
  • Is Aaron Evans a member of the NAASC yet? Anyone else?
  • Have CSV jobs been advertised?
  • Revision of Canadian MOU is in the works. Will be between observatory directors, not funding agencies.
  • MOU with UVML for SIS development is in the works. Will support THz research, support Art Lichtenberger half time, as the "NRAO Director of the University of Virginia Microfabrication Laboratory". Funded under NAASC "Special Projects".
  • Newsletter articles due Sept 5.
  • Science Talks/visits:
    • Did anyone give any? Have any planned? If so, enter into NAm ALMA Calendar
  • Upcoming NAASC Science Colloquia and Meetings
    • EU ALMA Community Day/Surveys for ALMA Sept 3-6 2007, Garching
    • ANASAC discussed next NAASC workshop at their f2f (Aug17). Defered decision until next telecon.

• Project News (Wootten)
  • Annual external review of ALL THINGS ALMA in SCO Sept 10-12. Will include Ops. L.-A. Nyman will give ARC talks. We can attend if we so desire, but it is not necessary. Will be available via video. Over 3000 pages of review materials distributed to committee. New plats of site produced for the Review are mounted on NAASC bulletin boards, where red pins mark proposed weather station sites. Sci IPT Presentation.
  • Staffing at ATF begins. Carilli is covering for NAASC in near term.
  • At the ATF, the AEC brake and ACU issues have been resolved and static fringes on Mercury have been demonstrated with the new 2-antenna correlator and preproduction backends. Thanks to everyone for getting the ATF back into operation, especially Jack Meadows for fixing the AEC brakes, and Gene DuVall and Peter Napier for demonstrating fringes. All fringes were achieved using the new pointing model determined by Darrel Emerson and Jeff Mangum; onee does not need to adjust the pointing over time now since the new model is better than the previous one.
  • ALMA Board Charges to the ASAC (in Agenda); see also Board Response to previous Charges. the Board tasked us with coordinating a white paper: '...Accordingly, the Board asks that the Project Scientists coordinate a short ``white paper'' on the molecular data requirements for ALMA, including coordination with other major projects with similar data needs, to be submitted by the end of the year.'
  • 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 Biweekly Calendar
  • ALMA Construction Photogallery

• ANASAC
  • face-2-face meeting was Fri, Aug17 in CV. Agenda. Final Report & response to charges

• Main Event: Plans for FY2008
  • Review FY2008 Program Plan? Only if it can be posted in time.
  • CASA Beta release planning (Crystal)

• Reports from Working Groups
  • Software Testing
    • Pipeline testing:
      • Gearing up for UT5 in October. Have some questions for scientist. I think we may set up a pipeline heuristics group to discuss some of these (a subset of imcal?). For now, take a look at their question on continuum subtraction
    • Offline testing:
      • see Main Topic for beta release plans.
    • ObsTool. Testi organizing small test by end of summer. Only Knee & Hales expressed interest. There names have been forwarded to Testi.
    • Casapy User Interface: defunct?
    • Casapy simulator: stand by.
  • Calibration Group (JeffMangum): Calibration
  • Imaging Group (AlWootten):
    • ALMA Science IPT wiki page
  • MM Calibrator/Spectral Line Databases (Tony Remijan)
    • F. Lovas joined us July 2 to help add/edit content to Splatalogue. Aided by programmer William Cassidy.
    • We are expecting a "beta" release of all the new functionality, as well as some new surprises, by Dec 2007. Remijan will present the "New Splatalogue" to the ANASAC on Aug 17th and Remijan and Markwick -Kemper will give a "world-wide tour" of Splatalogue next year. The first unofficial stop is in the Fall to the NHSC. Plans have yet to be made yet, however.
    • With the database currently at ~4 million records and the anticipation of the single dish archive also using the databases at NRAO, the NAASC, E2E and Computing divisions of NRAO have purchased a dedicated database server.
  • Webpages (Tony Remijan):
  • EPO (Adams/J. Uson)
    • Ad for ALMA EPO specialist Posted.
    • Newsletter articles due Sept 5. Decide on electronic version (again).
  • NAASC Workshops (Evans)
    • ANASAC will advise
  • ALMA Meetings: (Wootten)
    • U.Calgary meeting "Observing with ALMA" May 26-27 2008, organized by Rene Plume. Place to demo casa, alma simulators?
    • Other Meetings of interest listed at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/naasc/alma_meetings.shtml