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KartikSheth - 2010-09-02
Overall Straw Person Plan suggested by Carol and sent to Dave and Jean here.
Dec 15 Update from Jean and Dave - both are working on their talks and are in good shape. Sent Jean a M51 simulation for ES and emphasized that we should probably warn users away from trying to make big mosaicks even if that is their intention.
Abstracts for the 2010 Special Session were due this week. We had a lot of discussion of the abstracts sesp. from Dave and Jean for their science talks. Here was the strawman plan developed by Tony initially:
SUBMITTED ABSTRACTS ----
Carol Lonsdale: Title: The North American ALMA Science Center, NAASC
The North American ALMA Science Center at the NRAO in Charlottesville will provide user support for ALMA in North America. We will provide a brief overview of the
NAASC services for the community for the early phases of ALMA operations.
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Al Wootten: Title: ALMA: The March to Early Science and Beyond
Abstract: The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array is rapidly proceeding
through its commissioning stages in Chile. Tests at the atmospherically superb 5050m Array Operations Site and readiness reviews held during the Fall of 2010 will result in a decision to issue a call for proposals to use the instrument during its 'Early Science' phase. At the beginning of Early Science, projected for later in 2011, 16 antennas of the final 66 will stand ready to produce the deepest integrations ever achieved in the cool thermal spectral region. The array will be equipped with at least three of its eventual complement of ten receivers operating over a decade of bandwidth from 3.6mm to 0.42mm. At this point, its sensitivity will be on the order of 0.5mJy in a minute's integration. Operating at this stage baselines of at least .25km, ALMA will provide a beam as small as 0".3 on the little-explored southern skies from its Chilean site near the Tropic of Capricorn. By one year later, the array will have grown to more than fifty antennas; at the second call for proposals the array will reach 0.2 mJy in a minute and baselines will extend to the full set of array configurations, effectively about 14 km. Observations which will be made possible by these transformative capabilities will be presented.
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Kartik Sheth: Title: Tools for the ALMA Users for Early Science
Abstract:The first opportunity to use ALMA will be announced shortly in a Early Science Call for Proposals. In this talk, we provide an overview of the Phase I user tools (ALMA Observing Tool, ALMA Sensitivity Calculator, SIMData and Splatalogue) needed for the North American community to plan and propose for observing time with ALMA. We will also provide a brief overview of the phase II tools (Project Tracker, ALMA Science Archive) that will be used by PIs of approved programs to execute their science programs. After observations are complete, users will likely use the ALMA Science Archive and CASA to further examine the data and data products, which will be described briefly.
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James Di Francesco: Title: North American ALMA Science Center: Canadian Roles
Abstract: In partnership with NRAO, North American regional support for ALMA operations will be provided also by the National Research Council of Canada though its Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics (NRC-HIA) in Victoria, BC. In this short presentation, we describe the roles the Millimeter Astronomy Group of NRC-HIA will play in providing user support, documentation and observers for ALMA.-
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Jean Turner: Title: ALMA does Galaxies! A User’s Perspective of Early Science Abstract: Star formation and its regulation, rotation curves, dust and gas masses, gas dynamics and secular evolution of galaxies, interactions and mergers, cosmic pyrotechnics, and monster-feeding, are among the many topics that can be studied with ALMA. We talk about many of the explorations of the extragalactic world that are possible with this fantastic instrument in its Early Science incarnation, and discuss how these first generation studies with Early-ALMA compare to what will eventually be possible with the full array.
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Dave Wilner:Title: ALMA from the User Perspective: Galactic
Abstract: ALMA will be transformative for studies of cool components of the Galaxy, in particular the molecular gas and dust in the immediate vicinity of young or evolved stars where arcsecond or higher resolution will be especially valuable to probe structure, dynamics, and chemistry.
At the start of Early Science scheduled for 2011, the subset of available ALMA antennas already will provide spectral line and continuum sensitivity and imaging capabilities that exceed any of the existing millimeter arrays. Using examples from star-forming regions and circumstellar disks, I will illustrate how a prospective ALMA user can realize the fantastic potential of this new facility in the Early Science stage and beyond.