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ALMA Science IPT Telecon

Phone Meeting 2004-June-15

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Old Business

The enhanced Agenda from last month's meeting is available.  Science IPT notes from last month's telecon. Last Meeting Action items    
- Action items from various sources:
Last month's Science telecon:

ACTION: John will work on the antenna location plan        In process, draft available (see below)

SE telecon.  ACTION: [Wootten]- what is the required IDR for a single image.  Bring this up in the science telecon. Done
                   ACTION: Science IPT, [Laing]- produce short memo on origin of spec on differential gain stability. [N.B. ALMA Tech Requirement No. 264 Differential gain stability between channels of a polarization pair 5e-4 at 300 sec TBC allocation to FE and BE are each 0.707 of this value 320 23] Holdaway has written protomemo.

ALMA Week:  [Wootten]Provide detailed values on solar filter to FEND by 30 April  Late
                        [Laing] Develop a requirement for stitching together the BEND 2 GHz sections for overlap.      In process; see comments at CR79 linked below, which lead to a further linked document on this subject by Comoretto, Butler and others.
                        [Conway, Laing] Choose antenna stations where first antennas will be located for first fringes.  4-30-04   [See CSV document]   
                        [with SE]  Decide when antennas are handed over to Commissioning (after 1st light or 1st fringes?) 6-01-04

             MILESTONES: all leaders of level 3 milestones with upcoming deadlines to report on status.  The Milestones, with project number, are available updated for today.

New Business -- Agenda

 ALMA Calendar 

LAMA Memo Series  has  inhabitants!

- Project news/updates (Wootten and Wilson)
     * JAO Positions (Wootten)  Proposed reorganization of the Science IPT.
     * ALMA Science Workshop Meeting  14-15 May 2004.  Presentations (Wootten)
     * Change Control Board actions:  Minutes  According to my notes, it was decided to enact the request to implement the tunable filter for the correlator, pending review.  The delta review will probably occur in January 2005.  A request to change the B9 multiplier from x5 to x6 was postponed pending resolution of several questions.
Note Shillue's comment: "The LO reference was set to as a high a frequency as was practically possible to minimize the multiplication factors.There is expected to be a frequency independent component to the LO reference phase noise. Increasing the multiplication factor means this component of phase noise goes up. Same goes for residual phase drift . Thus the change has a negative impact on the overall array coherence for Band 9. However, I think the effect will be negligibly small."
         The next CCB meeting will occur 25 June.  Possibly on the agenda:  Science Requirements, System Requirements, BE, FE specifications.

Reports from Subgroups
   -1 Project Scientists (see above)
       * Report from BE CDReview (Laing).  Documents for this review are available only to committee members, amazingly enough! 
       * Report from B7 PDReview (Laing)
       * ARCs.  Paul vanden Bout arrives today to become first Head of the North American ALMA Science Center.
     
  -2. Configurations (Conway)   -3 Calibration (Mangum)
      - The Requirements and Specifications August 03 Version (Wootten)
      -  Draft Bandpass Calibration Memo. from Bacmann and Guilloteau (3 of 3 reviews, favorable,  received; final version near completion)
                    - Very drafty Calibration plan.
      - Plan for further tests of amplitude calibration devices:   Progress? (Martin-Pintado)
      - Please see the report from Berkeley on the absolute calibration via gain horn experiment.

     -4.Design Reference Science Plan (Hogerheijde )

    -5 Imaging (Gueth, Holdaway)  
        - IDR 

   -6. SSR (Lucas?)
       -  Minutes of last week's meeting.  Data rate memo pubished as ALMA Memo No. 501.

    -7 Site (Radford, Nyman)
         -   ICDs

   -8 Operations, Science Commissioning and Verification (Laing)

       -  ALMA Commissioning and Science VerificationSkip to reply button for entry 1. Group -- Laing, Emerson, Chandler, Lucas, Mangum, Shepherd, Wilson, Wootten
    -9  Any Other Matters Arising
                   *AlcatelPrototype*

   * Mercury imaged with the AEC antenna at the ATF:
   AEC Mercury image 3mm
The above image of Mercury at 95 GHz was made by Robert Lucas with the AEC ALMA prototype antenna at the ATF when the planet was 25 degrees from the Sun.  The planet angular diameter was 7.2 arcsec.  Contour levels are 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 30,...,90 %.  The top plot is the raw beam-switched map (beam separation 160 arcsec).  Bottom is the EKH restored image, with contour levels 2, 4, 8,...,16,18,20,30,...,90 %.

Upcoming Meetings

  Upcoming Meetings - Wootten

International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy 59th Meeting - - June 21-25, 2004

Cores, Disks, Jets & Outflows in Low & High Mass Star Forming Environments: Observations, Theory and Simulations  July 12-16, 2004  Banff, Alberta, Canada

ESO ALMA COMMUNITY DAY 2004 September 24 Garching Germany

The Cool Universe: Observing Cosmic Beginnings   2004 October 4-8  Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, Valparaiso, Chile

New Windows on Star Formation in the Cosmos  2004 October 11-13 University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland

Dusty and Molecular Universe  27-29 October 2004, Paris

Protostars and Planets V  24 - 28 October 2005  Hilton Waikoloa Village, The Big Island, Hawaii