Minutes for meeting Mon, 15 November 1999 at 4pm EST.
Date: 15 November 1999
Time: 4:00 pm EST (2:00 pm Socorro, 2:00 pm Tucson)
Phone: (804)296-7082 (CV SoundStation Premier Conference phone).
Past minutes, etc on MMA Imaging and Calibration Division Page
Minutes
ACC: Sweden has joined the project; Spanish participation is still pending.
There is a new WBS for ALMA at:
The draft report of 11 pages, ~45 KBytes.
The current version of the spreadsheet is about ~340 KBytes.
The US antenna contract will be let during the beginning of December, with delivery probably occurring in the last months of 2001.
The Phase II Scope and Cost of ALMA should be defined to the auditable stage by 31 Mar 2000. AW will update the ImCal version of this and deliver it to Simon by 30 Nov 99.
Darrel Emerson has returned from OVRO where he discussed preparations for the early Dec99 meeting of the receiver groups in Grenoble.
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Report From: Simon Radford
Over the past two weeks, a joint group conducted an extensive field campaign at Chajnantor. The group included, at various times, A. Otárola (ESO), K. Brooks and L.-A. Nyman (SEST), S. Sakamoto (LMSA), L. Granarski (Chalmers/OSO), L. Araya L. and C. Arqueros G. (U. Antofagasta), R. Giovanelli (Cornell), R. Blundell, S. Paine, and R. Wilson (CfA/SAO), and B. Butler, S. Radford, A. Wootten, and M. Yun (NRAO). Activities included about 30 radiosonde launches to investigate the diurnal movement of the inversion layer; repair of the ESO and LMSA interferometers and of the SAO FTS; installation of a lightning detector (NRAO) and of a geodetic GPS receiver (Chalmers); survey and identification of candidate sites for compact configurations; precision GPS survey of candidate sites, pipeline crossings, access roads, benchmarks, and other landmarks; test of Doppler Sodar unit for measurement of turbulence; exploration of terrain south and east of Chascon for extended configuration; visits to the candidate OSF sites and the CBI installation; identification of soil test locations; and housecleaning and maintenance, including Y2K readiness verification.
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At the moment, we have (more or less):
0) user specification of desired array, or simulation from existing data
1) simulation of visibilities and autocorrelations
2) simulations of multiple fields, including voltage pattern application (this covers both targetsource/calibrator and mosaicing)
3) elevation-dependent, opacity dependent thermal noise
4) properly deals with weights and noises for a heterogeneous array
5) user control over the minimum observing elevation and the extent of permitted shadowing; sub-elevation or shadowed data are flagged.
6) unlike SDE simulations, AIPS++ Simulated data are tied to the actual time frame (ie, not just hour angle and LST).
7) errors added to the data include: polarization leakage, antenna-based gain errors, bandpass errors, parallactic angle.
8) either RL or XY feeds
===> a number of these capabilities have not been fully tested.
In the near term (ie, a week):
a) permit the application of errors in terms of a Table (ie, the user can create the errors independently of the simulator program).
b) user will have complete control over the observing schedule (currently, we loop through all observed fields, each with its own number of integrations, until the observng time runs out).
c) more user-friendly information to guide in the simulation process.
In the longer term (ie, a few months):
i) pointing errors
ii) voltage pattern errors
iii) realistic phase screens moving overhead
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First Joint ALMA Science Advisory Committee Meeting 23 Nov 1999.
US Members are Neal Evans, Chair (nje@astro.as.utexas.edu),
Dick Crutcher (crutcher@astro.uiuc.edu),
Geoff Blake (gab@csardas.gps.caltech.edu),
Mark Gurwell (mgurwell@cfa.harvard.edu),
Min Yun (myun@NRAO.EDU),
Nick Scoville (nzs@astro.caltech.edu),
Jack Welch (welch@astron.Berkeley.EDU),
Chris Wilson (wilson@physics.mcmaster.ca)
Ex Officio: Al Wootten (awootten@NRAO.EDU),
Darrel Emerson (demerson@nrao.edu)
ALMA/EU Karl Menten, Chair (kmenten@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de)
Roy Booth (roy@oso.chalmers.se),
Malcolm Walmsley (mwalmsley@arcetri.astro.it),
John Richer
Ewine van Dishoeck (ewine@strwchem.strw.leidenuniv.nl),
Pierre Cox
Arnold Benz (benz@astro.phys.ethz.ch),
Jesus Martin-Pintado (martin@oan.es),
Ex Officio: Stephane Guilloteau (guillote@iram.fr),
Sec'y Peter Shaver (pshaver@eso.org)
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See separate mail item on this to read it.
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Action Items 15November99
DECISION: Configurations--where are we? Feb meeting plans...
DECISION: 183 GHz or 22 GHz phase correction?
DECISION: Is a nutating secondary necessary?
DECISION: What is the effect of 1/f noise in the HEMT amplifiers of SIS
receivers upon our ability to combine total power and interferometric images
into a faithful representation of the sky?
MEETINGS: SAC meeting 23 November 1999 for members only.
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Travel
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ALMA Correlator Output Data and Computer Processing Rates (#8) - Pisano, Glendenning