BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO September 27 - October 11, 2004 ******************************** THIS BIWEEK *********************************** The Japan Negotiating Team, a committee of the ALMA Board, and representatives of the Japanese National Institutes of Natural Science (NINS) signed a draft agreement already signed by ESO and the National Science Foundation concerning the construction of the Enhanced ALMA on 14 September. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ALMA Science Advisory Committee meets in Charlottesville for their biannual face-to-face meeting on Monday 27th and Tuesday 28th Sept. at the NTC. Wednesday through Friday ALMA IPT leaders will meet in Charlottesville at the Marriott Courtyard on W. Main St. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ALMA Management Advisory Committee will meet 11 - 12 October in Florence, Italy with the ALMA Management IPT and the JAO. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Adrian Russell will join the NRAO staff as the ALMA North America Project Manager in early January 2005. He plans to attend the JAO/IPT meeting in Charlottesville 29 Sept-1 Oct. Currently, he is Director of the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC) in Edinburgh, Scotland. Previously, he has been Deputy Director of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, the UK Project Manager for the Gemini twin 8-metre telescopes project (1995-2001) and Head of the JCMT Instrumentation Programme at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Larry D'Addario will depart NRAO on 2004 October 8 for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As System Architect, Larry has guided the design of ALMA. His contributions have been fundamental, from design to integration of ALMA components. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Simon Radford announced that he will depart NRAO 2004 November 1 to assume a post at Caltech as Asst. Project Manager for the Caltech/Cornell 25m telescope to be constructed at Chajnantor. Simon pioneered the characterization of the Chajnantor site, now home to several observatories--CBI, ASTE, APEX and a new survey telescope from Nagoya Observatory. As Site IPT lead for NA he has managed the planning for the construction of the AOS on the site. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Past issues of this Calendar may be viewed at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html ******************************************************************************* General Happenings Chile: SPdA: The ALMA Board will meet in the shaded courtyard of the ALMA Camp in early November. The Camp is essentially complete (15 beds) for the current phase of its operation. The Contractor's Camp, also complete at minimum level, currently houses the four road construction supervisors. AOS foundation contractor has been selected; bids for the building shell are due 1 Oct. Santiago: The JAO convened a meeting in Santiago on September 14 to review site development status and issues.The temporary ALMA office in Santiago, Chile will host a meeting of the JAO and Executives on 1 November; members of the Board may visit the facility before their departure to San Pedro that afternoon. TUC: The group in Tucson, augmented by AOC folks, succeeded in constructing a short baseline (16cm) interferometer using the RF simulator. This provides a very sensitive tool for studying phase stability and drift throughout the first LO system. A CW signal at ~96 GHz is radiated from a free-running Gunn oscillator into both horns of the RF Simulator. Each receiving channel uses a separate First LO Driver at about 82 GHz, where both drivers are locked to the same optical reference from the new Laser Synthesizer (over separate 2m fibers), but with different offset frequencies. The two IF outputs of the simulator at about 12 GHz are then multiplied in a microwave double-balanced mixer. So far offset frequency differences of 1 kHz to 1 MHz have been tried, producing a clean sinusoidal "fringe" at that frequency. NAASC: Ewine van Dishoeck will speak on "Gas and Ice in Protoplanetary Disks" Reprinting of the Spanish version of the ALMA brochure will proceed, mainly for distribution in Chile. NTSC versions of the ALMA DVD have been distributed. Vector versions of the ALMA logo are available from ESO EPO and NRAO EPO. NTC: Testing of the first Band 6 (1.3mm) Production Cartridge will commence on the 24th of September. Excluding the Tunable Filter Bank cards, 84% of the total boards needed for the first quadrant of the ALMA Correlator have been successfully bench tested and are ready for installation. ATF: Tests continue on the Vertex Prototype antenna. ALMA Prototype System Integration expects first fringes 1 June 2005. AOC: Tests by the Correlator IPT at Socorro last week show that the Vega 1 digitizers work well enough for testing the ALMA data transmission system. DAILY CALENDAR (Times EDT ) Mon 27 September All day event: ASAC Meeting, NTC 9:30 AM-10:30 AM: NA Project Office Staff Meeting 10:30 AM-12:00 PM: JAO/IPT Teleconference Tue 28 All day event: ASAC Meeting 4:00 PM-5:00 PM: Colloquium: "Gas and Ice in Protoplanetary Disks" by E. van Dishoeck Wed 29 All day event: ALMA IPT Meeting Thu 30 All day event: ALMA IPT Meeting 5:30 PM-6:00 PM: CCB Meeting Fri 01 October All day event: ALMA IPT Sat 02 Sun 03 Mon 04 9:30 AM-10:30 AM: NA Project Office Staff Meeting Tue 05 4:00 PM-5:00 PM: NAScienceIPT teleconference (open to all interested parties) (434)296-7082 Agenda to be posted at: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ Wed 06 10:30 AM-12:00 PM: ASAC Teleconference Thu 07 8:30 AM-10:00 AM: JAO Teleconference Fri 08 Sat 09 Sun ****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS ****************************** ALMA Calendar * 27-28 September -- ASAC face-to-face meeting, Charlottesville * 29 Sept - 1 October -- face-to-face IPT Leads Meeting, Charlottesville * 4-8 October -- The Cool Universe: Observing Cosmic Beginnings Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, Valparaiso, Chile * 11-12 Oct -- AMAC Meeting, Florence, Italy * 11-13 Oct -- New Windows on Star Formation in the Cosmos University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland * 18-19 Oct -- PDR for the Tunable Filter Bank card; Bordeaux * 27-29 Oct -- Dusty and Molecular Universe Paris * 29 Oct -- ANASAC Telecon * 1 Nov -- ALMA JAO and Executives Face-to-face Meeting, Santiago * 2-3 Nov -- ALMA Board Face-to-face Meeting, OSF, near San Pedro de Atacama * 2 December -- ALMA Board Telecon * 5-7 Jan 2005 -- UNSC URSI Boulder meeting Commission J * 6 Jan 2005 -- ANASAC Telecon * 11 Jan 2005 - ALMA Town Meeting, AAS San Diego * 27 Jan 2005 -- ALMA Board Telecon ******************************* TECHNICAL NEWS ******************************* *******************************ALSO OF INTEREST******************************* ******************************************************************************* Please send information for upcoming calendars by Friday evening of the preceding biweekly period to Janet Bauer or Al Wootten via e-mail (jbauer@nrao.edu or awootten@nrao.edu). The calendar will be issued between late Friday and sometime on Monday by e-mail to all NRAO scientific staff members and anyone else interested. A specific mailing list, alma-info, has been created for anyone wishing to receive it. Past issues are now available at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html