USG Agenda Dec. 6, 2010 -- ES Primer

• News
• Primer
  • Send for Project review by Dec. 10, Final version needed Dec. 29
  • What time will ES example folks meet tomorrow: 3PM EST is current strawplan

Post Primer Comments/Suggestions Below

• General: The printer version on the copier here seems to show a somewhat "compressed" font - text seems busier than usual documents and I was wondering if we could perhaps make it a bit easier on the eyes by using a different font or expanding the font and line spacing a bit. (KS)
• General: Some of the figures have coarse resolution on the printed version - higher resolution for Fig 3, Fig 11 would be better. All the OT screen captures are not ideal except for Fig 21 which is also somewhat larger - so I am not sure if this one was made differently or whether Pages simply does a better job rendering this one than the others. (KS)
• General - Would be good to add Logos of all the executives to the cover page as we do for the mousepad. (KS) JH: not worth putting a lot of time in this until we find out if JAO will produce a single template in time (ACTION ON GERALD TO PURSUE VIA SciWeb/Documentation W.G.)
• Figure 1 is very dark, how about http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/visuals/images/?g2_itemId=1685 (CLB)
• Page 3, first para: "...but with limited capabilities..." => "but with limited capabilities compared to the completed array". Somewhere need to say that even in Early Science, ALMA is [at good as? far better than?] existing mm facilities JEH: THIS DOES APPEAR SEVERAL TIMES LATER, SO NEVERMIND. Next sentence: replace "and proficient in planning" => to "and to start planning" (i.e. under promise). (JEH)
• Page 3: Purpose of this document: we need to make it clear here that this version only covers the first ES call, i.e. "Cycle 0". There will be a second ES call in the First quarter of 2012 with expanded capabilities: Cycle 1 (CLB). JEH adds: lets not commit to which quarter of 2012 the 2nd call will be issued. At meeting, decided to say "approximately 1 year"
• Page 3: Remove "one of the authors" - just list one name as a contact person. A lot of people have contributed to this document and might be better to just allow folks to get the credit for the work and allow the community to know that this is a joint effort but with you as the person receiving the comments on it. (KS)
• Page 4, 1st paragraph: suggested rewrite: "ALMA will consist of fifty 12 m antennas in the "12-m array", as well as twelve 7m antennas in the ALMA Compact Array (ACA) and four 12 m antennas [with nutating subreflectors?] forming the Total Power Array (TPA)". Include the [] comment? (JEH) At the meeting we voted down the idea of including the [] text
• Page 5, Figure 4: Action on Al Wootten to provide improved figure
• Page 5: Sentence 1 which starts "NRAO, ESO.." - would be better written starting with "This site is extremely dry and stable (reference one of the SPIE or ALMA docs). - As it stands the transition from Page 4 to this sentence is a bit jarring. (KS). JEH adds: agree, but no need for reference.
• Page 5, Para 1 - here JAO is written down as an acronym - which is ok since it is defined earlier in the table on Page 3 but the text is uneven in that some acronyms from page 3 are written out - so perhaps just err on the side of writing them all out the first time. (KS)
• Page 5 - Change "residencia" to "astronomer residence" - we don't call other buildings by their Spanish names and so residencia seems a bit odd to put here. (KS)
• Page 5, 2nd para (starting "ALMA Chilean Ops..."): "change antenna configuration" => "move antennas"; "OSF site facilities are being completed with offices ..." => "OSF site facilities include offices..." (JEH)
• Short paragraph and photo on basic concept of configurations and "zoom lens" capability needed (CLB)
  • Suggest right after paragraph starting "ALMA Chilean operations..."
  • An interesting photo to include might be http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/visuals/images/?g2_itemId=1974
• Page 6, first bullet: suggest removing the horrible acronym CfESP, and spell it out if it is ever used. (JEH)
• Page 6, CfESP expected by end first quarter 2011; Deadline is not expected to be 2 months anymore, current strawman is 3 months but this is probably too specific. How about, not less than two months (CLB). JEH agrees
• Page 6: at meeting we decided that content of three bullets at the top of this page could simply be incorporated into the text for "What is Early Science"
• Page 6: ES paragraph 1: I believe that "available time" will also need to include a comment on "down time". So total time minus, weather, engineering time and unexpected down time. (AJR). JEH adds: get JAO (Lewis Ball preferably) to explicitly sign-off on this paragraph.
• Page 6: ES capabilities: (AJR)
  • Wavelength coverage - I believe we should just say, bands 3, 6, 7 and 9 and to see the table on pg 9.
  • Bandwidths - it is not a correct statement (I believe) to say twice any existing facility. Lets just say 62.5 MHz to 2 GHz and to see the table on page 8.
• Page 6 & 7 - Box the two parallel "During xxx operations, ALMA's capabilities will include.." sections to allow them to stand out. (KS)
• Page 6 - At least 21 spectral modes will be available according to Alison's last talk. (KS). JEH adds: is that 100% promised? Not sure. If we say it, we should be expected to provide all available modes in table on Pg8. I say stick to "at least 5" and leave table as is.
• Page 6, "What is ES", 2nd bullet: drop "(with baselines out to 500m possibly offered)", since this possibility is covered by the last bullet. For the last bullet, I would add "users should consult the Call for Proposal issued by the JAO and ARCs for an exact description of what capabilities they can propose for". Is "for" a preposition? (JEH)
• Page 6 "Learn More" - the link you give is to the Public JAO website. The more relevant link would the the JAO Science Website, if available in time. Ask JAO via Sciweb/Documentation WG.
• page 7: 5 milliarcseconds at 950 GHz (CLB).
• page 7: Our definition of basebands and spectral windows is confused for Full science. There will be up to 4 baseband pairs, but also up to 32 spectral windows for one polarization (this number is being checked) within each baseband, i.e. in full science basebands are not necessarily equivalent to spectral windows. Maybe we can say "There will be up to 4 baseband pairs with additional capability to further subdivide these into multiple narrow bandwidth independently placeable subbands (spectral windows)".
• page 7: last bullet: spell out full polarization (CLB).
• page 8: POINT FOR DISCUSSION: should we say "and possibly up to 0.5 km"? I am thinking no. (JEH) We said no a the meeting. Also - drop "at least" (2 places in table), and instead of "4 Bands" say "Bands 3, 6, 7 & 9 (see table on pg9)".
• Page 8: The "spectral channels will have some overlap"... I believe it would be better to get the actual explanation as to why that is so people aren't asking "why" or else give a link to where it explains the loss in bandwidth and channels. (AJR). JEH adds: since link doesn't exist, I think this is fine for a "Primer". At meeting the feeling was that the current parenthetical statement at the end of this paragraph could be replaced with a reference to an A&A article that Al was going to post the reference for
• Page 8: Under Minimum ALMA ES Correlator modes, say "Up to 4 basebands (spectral windows) will be available. Up to 16 additional correlator modes may be offered, though mixed narrow and wide band modes will not be possible." Before "Continuum observations..." (CLB)
• Page 8 - Mention somewhere that 4 basebands are available (its sort of mentioned in the last line but better to state it upfront in this table - perhaps in the red part at top? (KS)
• Page 8 - Is this a typo in the table? For mode 9, the bandwidth per baseband (400MHz) is larger than the available bandwidth per baseband (469MHz). (AEK)
• Page 9 - I think we should make the two equations for angular resolution the same - needlessly confusing and I prefer to have this table be consistent with the mousepad - so would prefer things in wavelength space rather than frequency space (KS)
• Page 9, top table: "number of baselines" - can we really correlate all simultaneously? (JEH) No, only up to 64 antennas, but most felt this was not worth specifying in the table
• Page 9, "(from the ALMA Sensitivity Calculator)" => "(from the ALMA Sensitivity Calculator, adopting the default weather conditions)"
• Page 9, table: include values for Band 1, 2 PB and LAS. But there are issues with this table (see Harvey's comment at end) - NAASC folk will discuss tomorrow and get back to Gerald with suggestion
• Page 9, Last line. Frequency range is 787-950 GHz. (HAW)
• Page 11: Suggest removing ES bulleted list and say "during this period. A number of ES examples suitable for Cycle 0 have been compiled by the world wide ALMA scientific staff and can be found on pages xx to xx"". (CLB)
• Page 11 - Sentence starting with "The JAO will monitor the data quality..." is too long and would be better as two separate sentences. (KS)
• Page 11 - "... ALMA Operations personnel on a best effort basis " instead of "in a best effort basis" (KS)
• Page 12: Before you propose: I would change all the "would be" [more suitable to full science] to "may be" (CLB)
• Page 12 - Remove "even" in sentence 1 under "Before you Propose for Early Science" (KS)
• Page 12 - Remove "Compelling" - not needed and may turn off some people unnecessarily (KS)
• Page 12: Required spatial resolution bullet, it is very likely that small mosaics will be offered. This needs to be incorporated. (CLB)
• Page 12: rewrite for 4th bullet: "Required spatial resolution and largest angular scale. The ACA and TPA will not be available for Early Science, so sources which have complex structure, or are significantly extended may be better candidates for Full Operations." (i.e., strike the parenthetical statement and final sentence) (AEK: Also change "which" to "that" in this sentence.)
• Page 12: Dynamic range can be improved by both uv-coverage AND more baselines. Beyond a full 12-hour synthesis, it is only more baselines that can significantly help. What is current written suggests it is incorrectly only # baselines that matter. (CLB) Suggested the small lie: "The dynamic range improves with the length of the observation and the number of baselines (which ..."
• Page 12, "Before you propose", last bullet: need to reword "...very useful in determining the best way to take the data", since users won't do that. Meeting is starting, so I don't have a rewrite.... (JEH). At the meeting we decided to simply strike this sentence, as well as the last sentence of this bullet
• Page 13: top panel of Figure 9 is back to giving the erroneous impression that a 5-sigma point source cannot be observed in 10min during full science. I suspect this could be easily fixed by fine-tuning the colorscale. The absolutely must be fix. (CLB)
  • see figure from previous version in attachments at the bottom
• Page 13: Say explicitly in the caption that the full science examples used 50x12m array (no SD and no ACA) (CLB)
• Page 14: I believe http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/visuals/images/the-alma-observatory/?g2_itemId=2696 is a nicer picture of the ALMA offices (CLB)
• Page 14 - Bold the part that says "Note that these examples use sensitivities.." -- would be best ti make this stand out. (KS)
• Order of science examples seems strange, suggest keeping former decreasing redshift order, currently there are 2 high redshift tacked onto the end. I do not find the final example sufficiently different to warrant inclusion (CLB)
• Page 28: Figure 27 is pretty confusing. A couple things I can suggest is that we "highlight" each section in the figure with the appropriate text on pages 28 and 29. For example, there is a "Phase II Program" section on Page 29. It would be good to point out on the figure that section and the other sections in the text that go along with that figure. At least have the titles of each section in the text reflect the titles in the Figure. (AJR)
• The use of "simdata" is a bit strange in the text. Talking to Remy, what he suggests is to change the font of simdata to Courier or 2 point because it is a CASA task and that is how programs are typically referenced in text. (AJR)
• Page 28: top, the figure number in the text is wrong. (CLB)
• Page 28: Figure 27 needs to fill the page horizontally to be legible (CLB)
• Page 28, tan colored sentence: rewrite to "...is expected by the end of the first quarter of 2011"
• Page 28, next to last paragraph has a confusing sentence. Change "the ARC portal users will be directed to" to "the ARC portal where users will be directed". (AEK)
• Pages 29-34 is a desert of only text. Add the following test images (CLB):
  • http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/visuals/images/astronomy/?g2_itemId=2786
  • http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/visuals/images/astronomy/?g2_itemId=2791
  • http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/visuals/images/astronomy/?g2_itemId=2798
• Suggest adding this pretty amazing photo in place of current Figure 28 http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/visuals/images/?g2_itemId=2660 (CLB)
• Page 29 - Earlier we said "simdata" - now its Simdata - we should just adopt one convention for this (and other) CASA task(s) (KS)
• Page 29 - "...made available to projects associated with proposers' institutional affil..." - should this be "PI's" institutional affil? Has this been decided? (KS) Yes, it should be "PI's instutional affiliation". We suggested this could be colored tan, but I think that would actually look weird, since have the sentence would not be so colored, so I suggest leaving as is (JEH)
• Page 29 - Bit confusing about when the proprietary clock starts ticking - since we don't state clearly how long it will take for the PI to get the data once observations are done - also missing is the detail about SB vs. Science Goal - the data are not released till Science Goal is completed right? Perhaps this is too complicated to explain now.. (KS). simply say "...one-year proprietary period starting from when the data become available to the PI".
• Page 30, end of 2nd paragraph, tan colored words: rewrite "Note, however, that the ACA and Total Power Array will not be available for Early Science"
• Page 30 (and elsewhere) - we often say "large mosaics may not be feasible" but small ones may be - what do we mean by large and small? (KS). say instead "limited mosaicing capability" for ES
• Page 31 - Suggest adding to the water content and turbulence the impact of other lines (ozone for instance) that can reduce our sensitivity. (KS)
• Page 31 - "not sure what process data in a reasonable but routine manner" means.. - perhaps just say "best efforts" here? (KS)
• Page 31 - Btw - is Band 9 also 2 polarizations - I thought Band 9 was 16 GHz per sideband -- does that mean we can get 32 GHz of bandwidth there in continuum? I need to ask Al this question. (KS)
• Page 31, paragraph after "Creating Images from your Data", tan colored comment: delete "will process the data in a reasonable but routine manner" (the bit about DSO's & ARCs doing the data reduction appears on the next page)
• Page 31, next paragraph, tan colored sentence: suggest rewrite to "Particularly during Early Science, but even during Full Operations, it may be that the baseline images do not meet the science requirements..." (lets not be so sure the pipeline will always be sucky).
• Page 33: include extension of first equation that renders it using fiducial values? Include equation for converting λ to ν?
• Page 36 - Perhaps left justify all the links? (KS)
• The OT calls λ/D the "beamwidth" whereas the primer uses 1.2λ/D which of course is the more commonly-used HPBW (actually the primer uses a very slight overestimate, it could be 1.18 instead of 1.2, corresponding to the 12 dB edge taper of illumination that is a spec). This disparity may be jarring to users. I have been unable to move the OT away from its usage. The OT calculates brightness sensitivity appropriately. (Jumping back and forth between HPBW and FOV in the primer is also somewhat confusing).(HL)
• When on p. 35 Nyquist sampling is described as "of order 1/2.4 x FOV", a literally correct expression is just λ/2D.(HL)
• The primer has some inconsistent numerical values related to all this. For instance where on p. 9 the FOV for band 3 is quoted as 56", this is not the value at the 100 GHz band center returned by the formula on p. 8 (that is 63"). (HL) NAASC has an action to get back to Gerald on this

• ALMA Zoom configurations:
  

• Configzoom3caption.txt: Caption for figure.

• Spectral_modes.pdf: Projected 21 spectral modes.