NAASC Meeting for June 01, 2011

Table of Contents


This agenda is available at https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/ALMA/NaascMinutes2011Jun01

Meeting Logistics:

  • Call date: Wednesday, June 01, 2011
  • Call time 13:00 ET or 17:00 UT
  • Duration: 1.0 hr
  • Locations: CV-ER230/TUC-N525/AOC-west conf. room/JAO-Alsacia/JAO-OSF(Science)/NRC
  • Connection for Video:
    • From NRAO select "CV-ER230"
    • hub ip=192.33.117.16
    • alternative ip for Chile only, if above drops: 192.33.117.17
  • USA toll-free Number: 866-675-5385
  • Outside USA Number: +1 517-444-6916
  • Passcode: 8445333#
  • Leader: Hibbard

Attendees:

  • CV: Sheth, Hibbard, Lonsdale, Lacy, Robin, Kim, Remy, Antonio Hales, Stuartt, Mehringer, Adams, Leroy, Friesen, Kimball, Braatz, von Schill, Remijan, Mangum, Hatz, Braatz, Hunter
  • TUC: Darrel
  • Socorro:
  • Canada:
  • Chile:
  • Other:
  • Apologies: NRC (at CASCA)

Action Items

Open Action Items:
  • Finish NAASC Visitor/New Employees guide (USG/von Schill)

Closed Action Items:

Agenda

  • NAASC Visitors: Stuartt Corder (thru June 10), Antonio Hales (thru June 2), Yancy Shirley (thru June 30) Next week: Dave Silva.
    • At 4pm today, Stuartt will give a talk on Beyond Phase I OT: From SB construction to implementation changes (i.e. OT-Phase II). See description under "Additional Materials" below.
    • At Tiger Team meeting tomorrow, Stuartt will give a talk on the AnalysisUtils (suite of useful scripts for reducing ALMA data)
    • NAASC Visitors/New employee guide activity needs to be restarted and finished. Action on USG (Lyndele w/Schnee, Sheth?)
  • Personnel
    • Recruiting NAASC postdoc, two Data Analysts (letters sent), 3 CSV Scientists & 1 JAO Operations Astronomer (shortlists made). Kimberly Scott (Penn) accepted PD position; will start in July. Waiting on other offer. Also coming: John Tobin (Hubble), Arielle Moulee (Janksy), Amy Reines (Einstein Fellow). V. Impellizzeri will assume Commissioning postdoc position at SCO in ~August.
  • Project News (AWootten)
    • Fourteen 12-m antennas at AOS.
    • Birdseye view of the antenna locations. Notice that antennas are being redeployed from the (full) ACA pads to pads in the NE quadrant of the compact configuration. This results in a rather smaller beam, but one which is not circular, for upcoming SV projects.
    • Last night: Weather: pwv started at 3 mm 5/30, dropped to 2mm, worst day in the week. see APEX Weather.
    • Furthermore at the OSF, PM04 and CM01 (NAOJ 12m and 7m antennas, respectively) are engaged in interferometry.
    • ALMA Monthly Reports
    • ALMA Newsletter
  • Group Reports
    • NaascManagement (Carol)
      • UC meeting May 11-12 in GB: No NAASC specific items. Concerns: better communication btw EVLA & ALMA CASA; want data processing workshop for EVLA in the Fall
      • PEP process is in full swing. Draft of functional evaluations due June 1
      • ANASAC (AWootten). Next telecon: This Thursday (June 2), 2pm ET. See Agenda. Topics: ASAC charges,
      • Science Communications & EPO (T. Burchel/Lyndele): Announcement for deployment of SV data to go out by COB today; Info for AAS Special Session (June mtg in Austin) due mid July; next eNews: article by CB on SV data
    • Next Science Workshop (VI): Outflows, Winds, and Jets: from Young Stars to Supermassive Black Holes (Lonsdale)
      • SOC: NAASC: Lonsdale, Lacy, Brogan, Kimball; ANASAC: Neufeld, Padgett, Scott, Williams, Wilner; Taiwan: Hsien (Chair), Ho; Lockman, Chandler, VLBA: TBD; Chile: TBD
      • LOC: A. Remijan, L. von Schill, N. Marcelino, K. Ransom
      • 1st SOC telecon today. Possible date: March 2012
    • UserSupportGroup (Carol)
      • See USG2011May23Minutes
      • Braatz is working on plan for mm course to be developed w/Jonathon Keohone (H-S college) during sabbatical visit (starts Aug). Based on Condon & Ransom course model. RI says - beware of issues with fonts.
      • Last training event: Ontario (June 3). Carol & Kartik wrote summary for Fred, NSF.
    • DataServicesGroup (Mark)
      • See DataServicesMeetingMinutes
      • Achieved First data synchronization between the North American ALMA Archive and the Archive down in Chile on May 26. Huge congrats to Mike H. & Dan K.!
      • s/w development workshop: will form SOC in next few weeks
    • JAOSupportGroup (John H)
      • See JAOsupportMinutes2011May12
      • May activities: SP reviewed & redeployed, incl. Tech HB.
      • Ed returned from Edinburgh meeting w/Pipeline developers: Summary (see end). Heads to Chile on Friday
      • ALMA Archive load test was successful. Only 1 out of ~170 submissions failed (none lost). Was repeated yesterday to test last tweaks. Proposal submission into archive is live as of 11:12UT today!
    • Imaging/Data Tiger Team (Crystal)
      • At tomorrows meeting, Stuartt will give a talk on the AnalysisUtils (suite of useful scripts for reducing ALMA data)
    • News from NRC (Schieven): all busy w/CASCA.
    • News from Taiwan (Aaron)
      • Would like to hold joint workshop with us in Hawaii, Fall 2012
  • Main Topic: SV Data deployment

  • Any Other Business

Additional Supporting Material

Abstract for Stuartt Corders' talk on OT-phase2 (and beyond) (Today, 4pm ET, CV-ER230)

Three parts, we can cover probably 1 and part of 2, and then people can come talk to me about the rest of 2 and 3 if interested. Part 1 will be walk through, Part 2 a prepared talk, Part 3 a walk through.

Overall Title: Beyond Phase I OT: From SB construction to implementation changes
  1. OT Phase II: Generating SBs from science goals and constructing them (for now): I will walk through the generation of SBs from a science goal and mention the observatory goal SBs. I will then go over the structure of the TWHya SB and one of the band switching SBs to show you how things are structured. Most of this will be (hopefully) automatic for us in the real phase II, but it is useful to understand what Alan will eventually dump out based on what we have learned on the phase II side.
  2. The OT-Control Interface: Overview of the python side of SBs: This is a talk I delivered to a select group of scientific staff at the JAO with eyes towards creating a few more people who can make expert mode scripts and make them in ways that are consistent with the overall approach. This is a overview talk of the control side of SBs and will not make you an expert in writing the code but it should prepare you for making a stab at expert modes and let you know where to find stuff.
  3. Python Control: A look at the code: This would be a walk through (probably on a volunteer basis) of the code structure and pointing how how things are linked in reality. This is essential to have prior to making actual modifications to anything but the beauty of expert mode is that you can change what you like and then integrate down into Control/SSR after you have perfected it.

NAASC items submitted to JAO for May 2011 Monthly report

Hiring activities

Served on search committees for JAO Operations astronomers.

JAO support

S. Corder served as NA CSV Liaison. NAASC staff contributed to work on ALMA calibrator catalogue and monitoring observations and on reducing Science Verification data, which included tracking down a number of system issues and contributing analysis code.

Reviewed materials and provided technical support for May 20 Science Portal and June 1 Science Verification data deployment, including Technical Handbook and all webcontent.

Software Development & testing

Ed Fomalont traveled to Edinburg for ten days to work with the ALMA pipeline group and wrote up possible strategies for pipeline procedures.

Supported CASA R3.2 deployment on May 13, including testing and updating of existing CASAguides. Wrote CASAguide for Science Verification Band 7 data on TW Hydra. Participated in 4th Integrated Test. Provided input on desired Cycle 1 software functionality to Computing IPT for CRD9. Updated Splatalogue website and guide, and started work on a "quickpicker" interface.

Implemented Web and Torrent-based solutions for SV data deployment from the NAASC. Achieved first successful archive synchronization between Chile and Charlottesville. Created a webapp to allow ARC staff to track tickets that have been transferred to another ARC.

Conferences and workshops

Conducted ALMA Early Science Training Events at the following locations: University of Florida (May 2-3); HIA, Victoria, BC (May 4-5); University of Iowa (May 9-10); Charlottesville, VA (May 9); Universite Laval, Quebec City (May 10); University of Calgary (May 12-13); University of Arizona/NOAO (May 12-13); AAS Meeting, Boston (May 23-24); University of Massachusetts, Amherst (May 25); Columbia University, NYC (May 27). Sample talks are posted to https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/alma/community1. All told, the NA ALMA Early Science events reached over 800 astronomers and included hands-on training with the ALMA Observing Tool and CASA Simdata task for more than half of these.

Gave ALMA-relevant presentations at Australian ALMA Community Day, and the workshop "Unveiling the Far_IR and Sub-mm Extragalactic Universe" at UC. Irvine, CA (May 12-14), and the Greenbank, WV workshop on "Data Intensive Astronomy". Produced an Executive-neutral poster for use at world-wide ALMA science events.

Other
Helpdesk support: serviced 19 helpdesk tickets & wrote four knowledgebase articles.

-- JohnHibbard - 2011-06-06
Topic revision: r2 - 2011-06-06, JohnHibbard
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