BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO May 9, 2005 -- May 23 2005 ******************************** THIS FORTNIGHT********************************* The next JAO/IPT meeting will be held in Chile at the OSF, San Pedro de Atacama, Sep 26-30. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The WVR Review went well in Onsala. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The ESO Finance Council meets on 11 May to delineate their position on the ALMA antennas. NSF is expected to do likewise during this period. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- An unusual eruption registered before dawn 5 May at Láscar volcano, located about 430 kilometers to the west of Antofagasta and a little further than the town of San Pedro de Atacama from the ALMA site, to its south. Lascar expelled ashes and columns of smoke by a period of 30 minutes between the localities of Camar and Talabre. The eruption was detected at 03,03 hours. No effect was reported at the ALMA site. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Considerable effort is being expended toward document production for the NSF Senior Review. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- An ALMA-related workshop on the new suite of ultrawide-bandwidth (sub)millimeter spectrometers now under development for several telescopes. The main goals of such a workshop (tentatively titled: "From Z to A: Z-Machines to ALMA") would be to familiarize the community with these instruments' capabilities, highlight the most important scientific questions about dusty high-redshift galaxies that they will be able to address in the near term, and discuss how observing programs can be designed to optimize synergy with ALMA and the EVLA on longer timescales. This would be a small workshop (~60 participants) held in Charlottesville following the Washington DC meeting of the AAS. The ANASAC is spearheading this effort; volunteers for the Scientific Organizing Committee are being identified. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Past issues of this Calendar may be viewed at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html See also the ALMA Calendar overview at: https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar ******************************************************************************* General Happenings Santiago: Candidate identified for Safety Manager position. OSF: The Lascar volcano produced a minor eruption. Job description for camp manager position created to be filled August 2005. 26 persons working at the site. Radford moved submillimeter tipper to CBI site. Tucson: Tests of revised LO Photonics Line Length Corrector with a prototype cable wrap show that the phase correction is no longer susceptible to low level acoustic vibrations. Emerson sorting through Tucson library for ALMA-useful volumes. AOC: Marson appointed as Computing IPT coordinator of ATF activities. First in-kind NAOJ staff member, Takahiro Hayakawa, has started work in Socorro. The move of the prototype LO sub-system from the NRAO Tucson lab to Socorro will begin June 20. Combined lab integration will begin the next week. ATF: System testing will resume week of May 9. NTC: Integrated testing of the First Band6 (1.3mm) cartridge in the first ALMA cryostat continues. Testing of SIS wafer #8 has begun, and the first chip tested is good. The preamp test system entered into regular production use. Front End Preliminary Design Review (PDR) set 6-7 July in Garching. New hire (from Socorro into the Front End Local Oscillator group) Jim Muehlberg began design of the digital Phase Lock Loop (PLL) circuit. All slots in all bins of the first quadrant have now had an initial functional verification. The Station Card firmware now provides full support for the Tunable Filter Bank (TFB) Card, and we are ready to test TFB cards. An ALMA Digitizer has been connected to drive one TFB card. The first basic spectral analysis seems correct (line detected and moved around; no conspicuous spurious features throughout the band) Victoria: Band 3 cartridge: For cartridge #1, a scan of the noise every 1 GHz was obtained for each LO point, power and Mixer bias. The SSB noise for the four channels is between 40K and 50K. NAASC: Planning for face-to-face ANASAC meeting, for meeting on Z-machines for extragalactic CO and for the NSF Senior Review continues. ******************************************************************************* DAILY CALENDAR (Times EDT ) see https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar Mon 9 May 10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon Tue 10 10:00 AM-11:00 AM: NA Project Office Staff Meeting 4:00 PM-5:00PM: NAScienceIPT teleconference (open to all interested parties) (434)296-7082 Agenda: https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/10May05A Archive: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ Wed 11 11:00AM-12:00PM Agenda: http://almasw.hq.eso.org/almasw/bin/view/SSR/2005-05-11 https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/CalAgendaMinutes20050512 Thu 12 9:30 AM-11:00 AM: Management IPT Teleconference 11:00AM-12:00AM: ALMA Calibration Group Telecon Agenda:https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/CalAgendaMinutes20050512 Fri 13 10:00 AM-11:00 AM: Front End handling discussion Sat 14 Sun 15 Mon 16 9:30 AM-10:30 AM: NA Project Office Staff Meeting 10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon Tue 17 10:30 AM-11:30 AM: Science IPT Teleconference Agenda: https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/17May05Agenda Wed 18 Thu 19 9:30 AM-11:00 AM: Management IPT Teleconference Fri 20 Sat 21 Sun 22 ****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS ****************************** ALMA Calendar--see also https://wiki.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/NAASC * May 10-11 -- ESO Finance Committee meeting * May 17 -- 14:30UT Science IPT Telecon * May 26 -- 1500UT ALMA Board telecon * May 29-Jun 2 -- AAS Minneapolis * May 30-31 ACA Correlator PDR, Tokyo * June 5-6 -- ESO Council * June 12 -- 1-5pm ANASAC Face-to-Face CfA, Cambridge * JUN 13 - 16 Workshop on submillimeter wavelength astronomy in Cambridge. Registration deadline is APR 30. For more information, log onto the event website: http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/smast05. * June 21-22 -- ALMA Board Meeting, The Hague, Netherlands * June 21-24 Bands 4 & 8 PDRs, Tokyo * 6-7 Jul - Front End IPT delta PDR, Garching * 6 Oct -- Rolling Stones come to Scott Stadium, Charlottesville ******************************* TECHNICAL NEWS ******************************* *******************************ALSO OF INTEREST******************************* 'Status of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array', by T. Wilson, T. Beasley and A. Wootten, a contribution presented at "The Cool Universe: Observing Cosmic Dawn" held at Valparaiso, Chile last October to be published in the ASP conference proceedings volume may be read at: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/cooluniverse.pdf ___________________________________________________________ CSO CALL FOR PROPOSALS Deadline: 31 May 2005 The Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO) encourages observing participation by astronomers from both U.S. and non-U.S. institutions. For instructions on applying and for information about available instruments, including new bolometer cameras, see http://www.submm.caltech.edu/cso/cso-call.html. Applications for observing time between 1 September 2005 through 31 January 2006 are due by mail 31 May 2005. Applications will be reviewed by an outside peer group. ****************************************************************************** Please send information for upcoming calendars by Friday evening of the preceding biweekly period to Jennifer Neighbours or Al Wootten via e-mail (jneighbo@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 available at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html