Science IPT 13 May 2003 Attending: Tatematsu, Cernicharo, Richer, Lucas, Pety, Guilloteau, Schilke, Viallefond, Hills, Gueth, Wootten, Bacmann, Dutrey, Morita, Mangum, Butler, Conway, Hasegawa Action items from previous meeting and before, as listed on the agenda, were discussed. - Calibration * All to send comments on auxiliary devices document to Richard and John, with copies to project scientists and Bryan, by April 29; in particular, a prioritization of the devices is needed Status: Document revised but further drafts will be needed. * Bryan to update milestones with new dates, to be posted on Science IPT WWW. Ewine and Al to communicate them to JAO. Status: Communicated; posting finished. Some revisions will be necessary. * Bryan to organize agenda for calibration discussion at ALMA week. Status: Done. See agenda for details. - SSR *** All to send comments on data rates recommendation to John by April 29. John to finish recommendation and send to SSR. Status: Richer is close to having a revision and will send this to this group first then to the SSR. An issue is the granularity of the data. Guilloteau sent a letter of intent with the budget information to the Board, so they have been informed of a wish to implement the data rates as discussed. Action -- Comments in to Richer by 20 May; revised data rate report due by next meeting. - Operations/Design Reference Mission working group (someone from WG) Status: Operations: First draft reported received from Sramek, members in place. *** Project scientists to finalize composition working group on Design Reference "Mission" (wait for selection new European PS and overall PS?). Stephane and Ewine to circulate proposed plan of action. Status: This item needs attention. Design reference mission needs to get off ground. *** Al to check distribution line/continuum projects at CSO; Ewine at JCMT Status: Wootten reported that this distribution seems to be very skewed by the availability of new devices. Line proposals have increased as SHARCI ages, for instance. SHARCII is now available so this may teeter the other way. *** Mark to simulate science losses in continuum images if receiver gain stability specification of 1E-4 in 1 second is not reached. Note: preliminary estimates by FE IPT indicate that it may be exceeded by as much as a factor of 10. Status: Holdaway has not had the opportunity to attack this problem. Carry this over. - Configuration: *** Mark to finalize Y+ design, taking ASAC comments into account Status: This has been done. Holdaway reported some difficulty with iteration with Site IPT in getting rock sampling information back to change some pad positions. This was reported at yesterday's JAO meeting, where relief was promised (and finally delivered though not without problems; JAO/IPT minutes and action items seem not ever to enter the real world). Project News (Guilloteau) Chile: Parliament unanimously approved ESO permissions to operate ALMA and this went on to the Senate. Japan: Good negotiations occurred on 8 May. The JP contribution will likely include ACA (12 x 7m plus 4 x 12m) Bands 4, 8 and 10 Correlator for ACA (2GC will be collaborative, its scope to be defined) Valuation discussions continue, including operations aspects. JAO: Massimo Tarenghi is now full ALMA Director as van den Bout has stepped aside. Guilloteau remains interim project scientist. Other positions to be filled, including European Project Scientist. Subgroup reports: Wootten reported on ALMA LO tests, described in a document linked to the agenda. Butler reported calibration group acitivities. New tests at the IRAM 30m with the semitransparent vane in a new position are modestly encouraging; calibration accuracy of 2% may be achievable with this device. A new material was also tested. A report is on the cal group web page. A new draft report on ancillary devices is available. ALMA Week progresses well. Agendas for the Calibration and WVR sessions are reaching convergence. A face to face calibration group meeting is suggested for late fall or early winter. This will include the issue of ACA calibration. ATM is available on a web site which will allow project access. Source code only availabe at a relatively high level. Contact Butler for details. Comments: Bacmann is working on standing wave memo, bandpass calibration memo. This will require a few more weeks of work. ACTION: These memos to be distributed for comment at next Science IPT meeting. ACTION: Reference document for calibration is not available outside the Science IPT. This should be placed on ALMAEDM for reference purposes. Conway reported on the configuration group progress. Version E of the inner pad locations should be approved after a few more comments are addressed. Tomorrow there will be a review of the inner 79 pads, for which Conway provided a document to the Site IPT. An analysis including shadowing, beam properties has been done; the results look good. The group congratulated Conway on the recent birth of a daughter. Other milestones in his life include the logic of movement sequencing. The outer part of this is done, but more work needs to be done on the inner regions, where shadowing is important. Optimization for weather, scheduling to be done later. Timescale 9 months? Can we achieve that? Pad location calibration has been addressed among Calibration issues. Need longer to consider subarrays and their definition. Holdaway reported on his response to the ASAC questions on tradeoffs--it is really an issue of how many new pads the project is willing to fund, and that is set so that 16 must be reused of Conway's design, and 44 new pads or 14-15 per arm are provided. MH visited all sites in April eyeballing the soil, rock, drainage, topographical shadowing and access for these positions..The old DEM was pretty good. Some adjustments were made in the field but little effect was made on imaging capabilities. Since then, a backhoe has examined soil structure on the sites. There is a rumor that most of the Pampa la Bola sites have bedrock at too deep a level. A new mask was created, using 'ridgetops' on Pampa la Bola and new software was written to do optimization--12-15 pads may be affected. MH suggests that some antennas at the north of Pampa la Bola just may not be on bedrock. Expense of this may not be too high--only a few pads. Reconfiguration studies involving this arm will not be ready by 31 May. Japan reported ACA simulations using Gildas and aips++ for crosschecking. No final anwer yet but a summary is being prepared. Lucas reported that the SSR had a meeting upcoming to discuss the software panel report and the project response. Actions identified involving the SSR but that group will discuss prior to vetting before a larger audience. Plans for observing mode staging are getting underway, discussions on interim operations features to be available, calibration plan and design reference mission expected to involve the SSR. There was no news from Imaging or Characterization. Next meeting 10 June 1500 UT.