Imaging and Calibration Group

Minutes for meeting Tuesday, 31 Oct 2000 at 4:00pm EDT.

Date: 31 Oct 2000

Time: 4:00 pm EST (2:00 pm Socorro, 2:00 pm Tucson)

Phone: (804)296-7082 (CV SoundStation Premier Conference phone).

Past ImCal minutes, etc on MMA Imaging and Calibration Division Page

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Agenda

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News -- Wootten

ACA. Jaap Baars has produced version two of his 'Aspects of the Antennas for the Atacama Compact Array" . Darrel had some interesting comments.

Widgets. Steve and Crystal posed some questions about the 'polarization widget'. We've attempted to get information on what is being done. I have summarized this for discussion.

Correlator. Alain Baudry has circulated his minutes from the Correlator Meeting which took place in conjunction with the face-to-face ASAC meeting in Berkeley in September.

Receivers. The PDR has been set for (NRAO holiday, of course) 19-20 Feb in Tucson, Az. Various documents have been issued: Windows and IR filters Agreement(htm)and (htm) Appendix

Optics Package (htm) or Optics Package (MSWord) (ask me for Optics Loss Tavle, Optics Table and Horn Table .xls files if you wish to see them).

Bryan brings up the problem of the non-intersecting axes, and there are some interesting issues. one of them is the fact that *all* of our receivers will be *far* off-axis - probably much further than folks are used to. the range is something like 3 arcmin at the highest frequencies to 9 arcmin at the lowest. so, at the highest frequencies, we are > 20 beamwidths off of boresight. neither peter nor i could come up with specific problems related to this, but others (mark or barry?) might, and so it might be nice to at least discuss it. i don't know if we have time today or not, but i could at least mention the issue...

There is a photonics/receiver meeting next week in Tokyo.

Project Book. 24 Nov: Changes due. 8 Dec: PB Frozen.

NSF has signed papers for Canada to join the ALMA project.

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SSR ALMA Requirements - Myers, Wootten

An updated requirement list may be found at Lucas' site (including priorities as discussed in Berkeley). Comments? SSR meeting next Monday. Robert has extended and revised the observing objects description written by Barry. Let's see your comments. See observing objects description.

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Site - Radford, Butler

Simon produced interesting figures illustrating the dictum that you can't tell phase stability by looking out the window. The Morocco meeting is coming up. For a gourmand's guide, see the current Gourmet magazine guide to Marrakech. For a trilobyte hunting guide, see the current NY Times magazine or visit the Trilobyte of the Month Club.

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Report - Wootten

Time for another monthly report.

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Blanking - Wootten

Followup: Jim Pisano tells me that for the ALMA Correlator, blanking can occur at the 48ms timing interval, after the LTA. The correlator stores up a few of its previous results before releasing them to the system. these results can be flagged at this point, before being released into the data stream. I suggested that this would be a good thing to have on the final version of the correlator.

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Configurations

The plans for the layout of the pads must be finalized by the beginning of construction. We hope that the first construction funds will arrive on 2001 Oct 1 when the FY2002 begins here. The project WBS has this date as 2002 1 Jan. Realistically, I think we need to inspect the pad sites before finalizing their location. We have begun this, but it is a huge task. I'd like to have some decision on the pad locations before the next austral summer, but that doesn't seem entirely practical. In my opinion, all these things suggest that we should have the next meeting PDR early in 2001. The ASAC will meet in early March, so this should give us a chance to respond to the PDR in time to present that response to the ASAC.

Time for another phone meeting??

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Action Items 1 Aug2000

DECISION: Configurations--where are we? Next phone meeting plans...ACA/THzA?

DECISION: Implementation of 183 GHz WVR?

DECISION: Are the specs for a nutating secondary correct?

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

October, 2000

October 13 ACC Meeting Paris, France

November, 2000

Nov 6-9 ALMA Photonics/Receiver Tokyo, Japan
Nov 6 ALMA SSR Meeting Teleconference
Nov, 13 ALMA SAC Meeting Teleconference
Nov 15-16 Vertex Antenna CDR Duisburg, Germany
Nov 28-29 EIE Antenna PDR Venice, Italy

December, 2000

Dec 8 Project Book Frozen Executive Fiat

End of Second Millenium A. D.

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

Butler

oct 22-29 | pasadena (annual dps meeting)

nov 3-7 | CV (readhead meeting)

nov 12-19 | marrakech, morocco (IAU site testing meeting)

Radford

nov 5-7 | CV (readhead meeting) ------