MMA Imaging and Calibration Group

Agenda for meeting Tuesday, 22 February 2000 at 4pm EST.

Date: 22 February 2000

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

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News - Wootten

From the ALMA/US DH meeting.

From the Tokyo ALMA Technical Workshop meeting.

At Tokyo, first Chajnantor test boring results were presented. Data is still being analyzed, but the borings from 5 of 6 spots showed surface detritus for the first meter or two, followed by much more solid rock. At one site, the saddle between ASTE and the Chajnantor container, only soil was found.

The new pre-prototype ASTE telescope (Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment), here for only nine days. Tomorrow the reflector will be lifted onto the mount (unless it snows, as called for). They plan to present the first submm results in Munich at the SPIE meeting in just over one month from now. The new Japanese URL is here. which they say will be updated by the end of the week.

Project book updates on track--Test Interferometer by 7 Feb, ALMA by 31 Mar.

New ALMA costing due by 11 Feb.

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Configuration Telephone Meeting 2/23/2000 - Yun

Tentative agenda for this week's meeting looks like:

1. Tucson meeting update

2. Topographical constraints

3. Image library

4. Metrics

5. Update on strawperson configurations

Min is rewriting the configuration portion of the Project Book.

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System PDR - Wootten

RECOMMENDED READING LIST

ALMA SYSTEM DESIGN PDR

Requirements and Standards

Rceiver Specs. LO Specs. Phase Specs. Block Diagram and Baseline Design

Block diagram. ;block diagram, 10p. (Note that pages 1-7 are B size and are not very readable if reduced to A or A4. Pages 8-10 are A size.)

LO Plan. This file should be on hand when studying the LO parts of the block diagram. It explains the frequency conversion scheme for each band.

Major Design Decisions Taken

1st IF memo. Memo summarizing discussions of choice of 4-12 GHz for the 1st IF, with copies of all relevant email attached.

LO Options. Pros and cons of various LO options considered, with the reasons that the present baseline ("millimeter wavelength reference" option) was chosen.

Alternative Designs -- different IF and baseband bandwidths

Other Ideas.

Timing and Synchronization

timing.

Fringe Rotation, Phase Switching and Related Issues

Protomemo. Advance copy of ALMA memo, in distribution this week.

Power Distributon

DCPower. TEST INTERFEROMETER CDR

All material is still in the Test Interferometer Project Book, which continues to get minor updates:

Test Interferometer Project Book .

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ASAC Meeting

Joint ALMA Science Advisory Committee Face-toFace Meeting 10-11 Mar 2000.

Minutes are being approved and discussed.

ALMA Science Advisory Committee

Teleconference 14 February 2000

Participants: Blake, Brown, Crutcher, Emerson, Evans (chair), Gurwell, Hasagawa, Martin-Pintado, Menten, Richer, Scoville, Shaver, van Dishoeck, Walmsley, Welch, Wilson, Wootten, Yun

Draft Minutes

The minutes from the last meeting were approved.

0. Recent News

R. Brown briefly reported on new developments concerning the 2001 budget. Phase 1 for the US project had been planned to finish at the end of FY 2000, but the Europe-US MOU called for completion at the end of FY 2001. The NSF therefore put a fourth year of Design & Development into the budget for FY 2001. However the amount, $6 million, was insufficient. It can probably be revised, and NRAO is to respond this week to the NSF with a more appropriate amount. For FY 2002 Phase 2 funding will be requested, and this should bring the US and European funding into synch. In Europe, current plans call for a proposal to be submitted by the end of this year, with a decision in 2001.

R. Brown also mentioned that the contracts for both prototype antennas should be signed this week, with delivery still scheduled for Oct/Nov 2001.

1. Agenda for next meeting

The agenda and plans for the face-to-face ASAC meeting in Leiden (10-11 March) were reviewed. There were suggestions that the polarization session be closer to the receiver session (Crutcher), that a contribution be given on an IR WVR (Wilson) in conjunction with the planned WVR report, that there could be a session on correlators (Scoville). Configurations will be moved to the second day to accommodate this change. The white papers received by the 3 March deadline will be distributed before the meeting.

2. Correlator

A. Wootten gave a summary of the recent correlator PDR meeting in Cville. (At the moment there is no official definition for an ALMA PDR, and the original MMA definition is being used). The PDR included several outside experts. A full report will be available shortly on the web. The next step will be the CODR (Concept Design Review), which is being planned. It is still intended that a decision regarding the final correlator for the full array will be made in the 2002-2003 time frame. As a report will shortly be available, the correlator will not be a major topic at the Leiden meeting.

3. Web management

Current developments and plans for the web site(s) were summarized by A, Wootten. The persons involved on the US side are B. Glendenning, K. Weatherall, and A. Wootten, and in Europe T. Contini, R. Warmels, and P. Shaver. Suggestions to any of these persons are welcome. Issues concerning availability of documents and electronic communication tools were briefly discussed. It was felt that, as these are mostly technical issues, recommendations should come from the individuals involved for approval by the AEC and (where relevant) the ASAC.

4. Progress Reports on White Papers

a. Polarization. R. Crutcher said a first draft is available now, and the paper will be ready for the March 3 deadline.

b. Total Power. W. Welch said that a partial draft and outline is available now. These include the science case and tests to be made with the prototypes. J. Richer asked whether any experiments could be done before the prototypes are available. The possibility of using SMA antennas was suggested.

c. WVR. J. Richer said that this document will review the experience up to the present, and discuss the experiments necessary for a 2nd generation. A. Wootten commented that there are relevant pages on the web.

5. Report on Receiver Meeting (Dec99)

This item was cancelled from the agenda, as S. Guilloteau was unavailable for the teleconference.

6. AOB

C. Wilson described the infrared WVM being developed by David Naylor at the University of Lethbridge. A prototype has been tested on Mauna Kea. It operates at 20 microns, and has a 0.5 degree beam leaving the 5-inch optics, which allows it to sample a 10 m patch of atmosphere at an altitude of 1 km. This system should ultimately give a one-sigma sensitivity of about 6 microns in the optical path in one second of integration. This sensitivity is for an average atmospheric precipitable water vapor (pwv) of 1 mm; the sensitivity should be three times better when the pwv is 0.5 mm. The current sensitivity from the first test run is comparable to the JCMT and CSO 183 GHz systems at present. It is a compact, liquid-nitrogen cooled system, and the cost will be about $50,000 each. Roughly a third of this cost is for the closed cycle LN2 dewar; the prototype is not a closed-cycle system. Naylor is writing a report, and this should be incorporated into the WVR White Paper being prepared by J. Richer. He or C. Wilson will show a comparison of this system with the 183 GHz systems at the Leiden meeting.

7. Next Meeting

The next ASAC meeting is in Leiden on 10-11 March.

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IAU Program - Wootten

Bryan submitted an abstract to IAU Symposium 202.

I have been asked to come up with a generic ALMA poster for meetings.

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WVR - Brief report on 20 micron device - Butler

Christine Wilson will report to the ASAC on a Canadian effort using a 20 micron device. Bryan has followed this up with Chris and will give a short report.

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Action Items 22Feb2000

DECISION: Configurations--where are we? March meeting plans...

DECISION: Implementation of 183 GHz WVR?

DECISION: Is a nutating secondary necessary?

DECISION: What is the total power specification on the ALMA?

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?

Year 2000

January	February	March	April
May	June	July	August
September	October	November	December

Jan, 20-21	Correlator PDR	Charlottesville, USA
Jan, 31	Division Heads/Team Managers Meeting	Teleconference

Feb, 3	Euro-SAC Meeting	Teleconference
Feb, 14	ALMA SAC Meeting	Teleconference
Feb, 16	ALMA Liaison Group Meeting	Tokyo, Japan
Feb, 17-19	ALMA Technical Meeting	Tokyo, Japan
Feb, 23	Configuration WG	Teleconference
Feb, 28-29	ALMA Systems Review	Garching, Germany

Mar, 2	Euro-SAC Meeting	Teleconference
Mar, 6	Software Working Meeting	Garching, Germany
Mar, 8	Photonics Coordination Meeting	Schipol, Amsterdam
Mar, 9	ALMA Liaison Group Meeting	Amsterdam, NL
Mar, 10-11	ALMA SAC Meeting	Leiden, NL
Mar, 20-21	Receiver Conceptual Design Review	Charlottesville, USA
Mar, 20-21	Array Configuration Review	Tucson, USA
Mar, 27-31	SPIE Meeting: Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2000	Munich, Germany

Apr, 3	ECC Meeting	Garching, Germany
Apr, 6	Euro-SAC Meeting	Teleconference
Apr, 7	ACC Meeting	Washington DC, USA
Apr, 10	ALMA SAC Meeting	Teleconference
Apr, 27-28	Science Software Requirements (SSR) Meeting	Paris, France

May, 1-2

Site Development Discussions

Garching, Germany

Jun, 12-16	2nd IRAM Millimeter Interferometry Summer School	IRAM Grenoble, France
Jun, 20-27	7th Synthesis Imaging Summer School	Socorro, USA

Send comments to <tcontini@eso.org> Last modified: Tue Feb 22 09:55:07 MET

Travel

AW -> AAS 12-16 Jan 2000. AW -> Tokyo 16-21 Feb 2000. AW -> Leiden 8 - 13 March 2000. ------