Minutes of ASAC Teleconference 4 June 2003, 1500UT Draft of 10-Jun-2003 Attendees: John Richer Ewine van Dishoeck Pierre Cox Phil Myers Jean Turner Chris Wilson (joined late) Lee Mundy (joined late) Al Wootten Stephane Guilloteau Tetsuo Hasegawa Invited Observers in Victoria: Masato Ishiguro Robert Lucas John Richer took the chair. Several people online (JR, AW, SG, TH, MI, RL) were in sunny Victoria where "ALMA Week" was taking place. Hasegawa-san noted that the invitation to the teleconference had been emailed to the wrong mailing list (asaconly rather than asac) so that the Japanese observers had not been informed of the correct time and date. John Richer apologised to the Japanese delegates for this error, which he had made when advertising the meeting on behalf of Al, and will try to ensure in future this does not occur. The minutes of the previous telecon (May 2003) were accepted without changes. The two actions from that meeting were reviewed and none needed carrying over. (1) Project Update Stephane Guilloteau gave a report. The recent ALMA Board meeting in Garching (May 26-27) was conducted mainly in closed session, to discuss the Japanese proposal, antenna procurement strategy, and key personnel recruitment. On antennas, the aim is still for a contract with a binding specification, not build to print, so that the contractor guarantees the performance. The Japanese proposal to their ministry asks for funds to construct the ACA comprising 12x7m plus 4x12m antennas, 3 receiver bands for the main array and the ACA, plus a correlator for ACA only. The Board is in the process of evaluating the value of this proposed contribution. The search for key personnel is proceeding slowly, which is obviously an area of concern, but there is expected to be progress within a few weeks. The Board had received and noted the AMAC and ASAC reports; Chris Wilson attended to present our report from the Grenoble meeting. The key issue which the Board noted was that of the impact of non identical 12-m antennas: in particular, does there exist a scientific showstopper which would demand identical designs and builds? At the Board it was reported that the Project has provisional rights to start work on the site access road by mid June this year. The Board did not discuss future ASAC charges - this will be done at a telecon in early July. The next Board meeting is on November 3/4th in Chile, and there is likely to be a groundbreaking ceremony at Chajnantor following this. The Chair asked Ishiguro-san if he wished to comment on the Japanese proposal. He confirmed that the major change from previous drafts is the decision to not ask for funds now for the second generation correlator (2GC) for the main array, but expressed strong interest in enhancements to the baseline correlator to increase the spectral resolution. (2) Report from the ESAC: Ewine van Dishoeck Ewine explained that there is little to report as the ESAC has not yet met with its new membership. This will take place on June 12th 2003 in Garching, with a busy agenda which will cover the statements from the members on their own and their country's scientific interests with respect to ALMA, the European Union Framework 6 proposals, and the election of 5 delegates to the ASAC. ACTION-1: JSR/EvD to distribute ESAC agenda (and minutes/report if available) for next ASAC telecon. (3) Report from the ANASAC Al spoke to this item in the absence of Chris Carilli. The ANASAC met on May 25th 2003 and elected Dick Crutcher as chair for 12 months. The NRAO Director has formed an ALMA Division within NRAO, to look after ALMA construction, the NA ALMA Regional Support Centre (which may have a different name in NA), and ALMA operations. Darrel Emerson leads this Division. The ANASAC will meet face to face in August, to discuss items including the NA RSC. In January 2004 at the AAS in Atlanta there will be a town meeting (1 hr) on ALMA and ALMA US science centre, similar in scope to the European meeting of November 2002. (4) ASAC presentation to the Board Chris Wilson addressed the Board meeting in May to present our recent report. There was little specific feedback, although the report did generate useful discussions. In particular, there was concern that work on inhomogeneous arrays contained little that was quantitative, and further work on this may be required. The calibration amplitude goals of 1 and 3% were also commented on, in particular: how many science projects need this accuracy was unclear to the Board. JR stated that he had attempted to clarify with the Board the policy with respect to dissemination of ASAC reports. The ASAC view is that they should be available both within and outside the project, so that colleagues outside ALMA can be kept in touch with progress and scientific capabilities. So far, JR has had no formal response from the Board. SG stated that the report is already distributed to IPT leads, and it is then their responsibility to distribute to their teams if they so wish. SG suggested that if we wish to aim for wider dissemination (outside the project), it may be necessary to have an open and closed parts of the report. It was noted that the AMAC report is available within the project only. AW stated that many previous ASAC reports had had useful appendices containing detailed work, such as the operations and stringency reports of the past two years. He suggested the ASAC should consider publishing these as ALMA memos. ACTION-2: JR to continue to seek clarification of ASAC report dissemination policy. ACTION-3: JR to consider possible memos to be extracted from past ASAC reports. ACTION-4: JR to ask if AMAC report can be circulated to ASAC. (5) Next face to face meeting. This cannot be fixed until after the ESAC meeting to elect new European ASAC members. John Richer said he will attempt to finalise a date within two weeks. Wishes expressed by ASAC members so far suggest the 4-7 September period is preferred. The planning assumption is still that we meet in Hamilton, Canada, for two days. ACTION-5: JR to fix and circulate face to face meeting date as soon as possible after June 12th ESAC meeting. (6) Charges for Next Meeting Our charges for the next meeting will be defined by the Board at their July 3rd teleconference. The list of suggestions circulated by JR was discussed. SG reported on the formation of an Operations Group, which includes several IPT representatives, plus Darrel Emerson and Dave Silva among others. Their work has just started via telecon, and will continue over the coming months. There are many key operational questions with major science implications, and it is expected that the Board will ask the ASAC to review/provide input for the operations plan as it develops. Two main items include the definition of the role of the Regional Support Centres (RSCs) and the model for time allocation. In addition to the operations planning work, the science IPT has an activity to draft a Design Reference Mission (DRM), and this may also raise questions to the ASAC over the coming months. Mark Holdaway will be looking at imaging simulations over the coming months. There may also be charges related to Japanese proposals. ACTION-6: ALL members to suggest potential charges to JR if not covered by original draft list. ACTION-7: JR to work with SG to submit draft charges for Board discussion and approval. (7) Software update - Robert Lucas Benefitting from Robert Lucas presence in Victoria, he was invited to attend the telecon to update the ASAC on recent software developments of interest to the ASAC. The recent software PDR report was being digested by the Computing IPT. Many resulting actions are for other IPTs. Development of a more detailed operation plan by the JAO is required urgently, as is a science operations and calibration plan by the Science IPT. The Science Software Requirements (SSR) work also needs revisiting, to quantify further the cost of the various requirements and develop detailed testing plans. Debra Shepherd has joined the SSR team at NRAO. The so-called SimLite simulation tool will not not be developed as part of the Observing Tool (OT), only an exposure time calculator. A very detailed heavyweight simulator will be developed, but not as part of the OT. Following recommendation from the PDR panel, the development of the Data Reduction User Interface workpackage (DRUI) will be postponed. In addition, an audit of the requirements of the data reduction pipeline will be done, as was done for the offline subsystem. Benchmarking of releases will be done carefully. The software system is now having its first critical design review (CDR1), but this is relatively lightweight. Release 0 will be in October. AW reported that Tim Cornwell is no longer head of Data Management (DM) at NRAO, and will also no longer lead the online pipeline subsystem. In this area he is replaced by Lyndsey Davis of NRAO. (8) Science IPT report. Development of amplitude calibration test hardware was reported. Further tests of the semi-transparent vane materials by the Spanish (Martin-Pintado) and IRAM groups (Carter et al) showed the foam transmission can now be measured to 2% or so, a significant improvement to the first tests at the 30-m where 10% or greater variations were seen. The improvement is attributed to positioning the absorber further from the receiver feedhorns so reducing standing wave effects. Although this is a step in the right direction, it is unclear if this technique can achieve the amplitude calibration goals. A second and near final draft of the requirements for the Ancillary Calibration Devices has been finished by Hills and Richer. The ATM atmospheric modeling code is now available in binary form for Linux platforms for use by the ALMA project. On configurations, it was reported that the inner (<3km) configurations are now fixed, with a detailed plan for roads and conduits being near final. Longer baseline configurations are nearly finalised: for these configurations, 5 proposed pads are on soil not rock, and 12 are on fractured rock. If these can be used is under debate. Winter snows on the site are deep at the moment, hampering progress. John Conway is currently working on a plan for antenna moves. (9) Next telecon John Richer raised the question as to the optimum timing of telecons. There was no objection to the proposal that we revert to 1430 UT. So, the next telecon will take place on July 2nd at 1430UT. Minutes by John Richer, 10-Jun-2003 Dear ASAC Colleagues, This is to confirm that the next ASAC face to face meeting will take place on September 5 and 6th in Hamilton, Ontario. Christine Wilson will be our host and I will work with her on logistics when she returns from travels. >From the replies I have had so far, everyone is available to attend on those days, which is excellent. I am planning as usual for a two day meeting, starting early on the 5th and finishing on the afternoon of the 6th. If anyone has any particular travel concerns about the location or timing of the meeting, do let me know. I expect most of the EU members will need to stay on the Saturday night to get reasonable airfares, but if NA members wish to fly back on the Saturday evening, that may be OK - we should aim to finish by 1600 on Saturday. We will have our next telecon on the 2nd July as planned: please send any agenda items to me. Regards John NA Chris Carilli , Jean Turner , Christine Wilson , Phil Myers , Lee Mundy , EU Ewine van Dishoeck , Pierre Cox , John Richer , Leonardo Testi , Peter Schilke , Chile Diego Mardones , Observers Munetake Momose , Yasuo Fukui , Satoshi Yamamoto Project Scientists - ex officio Stephane Guilloteau , Al Wootten , Ewine van Dishoeck