MMA Imaging and Calibration Group
Agenda/Minutes for meeting Tuesday, 14 Jan 2003 at 4:00pm EDT.
Date: 14 Dec 2003
Time:
4:00 pm EST
(2:00 pm Socorro, 2:00 pm Tucson)
Phone: (434)296-7082 (CV SoundStation Premier Conference phone 3rd floor).
Past minutes, etc on
MMA Imaging and Calibration Division Page
Agenda
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Science IPT News - Wootten
News from my point of view.
FIRST LIGHT ON VERTEX ANTENNA
Congratulations are due Tucson engineering and to the ALMA Test Facility
folks for successfully detecting the moon at 1 and 3mm in total power with the
Vertex antenna last night with the evaluation receiver. This is a
tremendous achievement on the road to ALMA!
Denis Urbane, Christian Holmstedt, Jack Meadows, John Fitzner, and
Antonio Perfetto where the engineers and techinicians who brought this
system online. Kudos, guys!
Here are moon detection traces from Jeff Mangum:
The "almasci at nrao.edu" e-mail exploder is now active.
- Level 3 milestones
are still being enhanced and revised. This is version from before Leiden but I do not have
the revisions for discussion at the AOC next week.
Project News -
ASAC
Telecon
5 Feb
ALMA Project Office moves to Old Ivy Road 18 December. jbauer is the
new 'Carolyn' Janet Bauer.
Software IPT
Preliminary Design Review
will be held in Tucson 18-20 March 2003.
The European ALMA workshop in Leiden 18-20 December. One purpose is
to stimulate interaction between the ALMA and Herschel-HIFI communities on
issues of common interest, in particular calibration. I have put into almaedm the presentations
which i received.
Non-AMAC Meeting 21-22 Jan Socorro
Post-Non-AMAC Meeting 23 Jan Socorro
ASAC Face-to-face Meeting 2-3 April 2003 in Grenoble, France at IRAM.
ALMA Week 28 April Victoria (TBC) now doubtful...
May 26/27 ALMA Board face-to-face (Europe)
The NRAO Director is forming a Science Advisory Group, which will formulate
an ALMA Science Workshop in conjunction with the Spring NRAO Users Committee
Meeting. I have suggested an
agenda
but the details will be entirely up to the SAG.
November 3/4 ALMA Board face-to-face (N.A.?)
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Proposed correlator upgrade -- Wootten
Please
review memo 441 by Escoffier and Webber. The ASAC made a statement:
The ASAC has read with interest the proposal in ALMA Memo 441 by Escoffier
and Webber to enhance the performance of the baseline ALMA correlator.
The proposed enhancement will increase the number of channels in the wide
band mode from 256 to 8192 points in each 2 GHz of the 16 GHz available,
and therefore allow for better resolution. The relatively small number of
spectral channels currently available in the wide bandwidth modes is a major
scientific limitation of the baseline correlator that would be remedied if
this enhancement could be carried out. Therefore, the ASAC encourages the
ALMA project to see if this enhancement to the correlator can be
implemented within the baseline ALMA project.
My understanding is, from the JAO/IPT meeting Monday, that this will be
treated as a possible enhancement.
Escoffier commented: "This is not correct. The 8192 point resolution requires one entire
quadrant processing the output of a single 2 GHz BB. This means that the
correlator will be able to produce 8192 points over only four of the
eight 2 GHz bands available. 4096 points across each without cross products or
2048 with polarization cross products." Webber reports that investigation continues.
If the logic is hard-wired into the FPGA's then this will cost no more than the current
design, but with a cost of future flexibility.
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Calibration - All
See
a summary
of the meeting held Monday 16 December.
See also presentations given at the Leiden meeting, links above.
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List of the status of the reviews/reviewers. The key is: "C" - already
submitted a review; "U" = submitted an unsolicited review; "Y" = agreed
to review the memo; "N" - declined to review the memo; "NR" - no response.
Links are provided to reviews; please consult the archive for subsequent
discussions.
1 - Memo 423 - Steve Myers (Y), Matt Carter (N), Geoff Blake (Y)
2 - Memo 422 - Douglas Bock (Y), Lee Mundy (NR),
Jeff Mangum (C)
,
Dave Woody (U)
(Memo withdrawn)
3 - Memo 427 -
Robert Lucas (C)
, Ed Fomalont (NR),
Craig Walker (C)
4 - Memo 372 -
Jeff Mangum (C)
,
Larry D'Addario (C)
, Mark Gurwell (N),
Bryan Butler (U)
5 - Memo 415 - Jose Cernicharo (NR),
Mark Holdaway (C)
, John Richer (Y)
6 - Memo 404 & 403 - Mel Wright (N),
Dave Woody (Y&C)
, John Richer (Y)
8 - Memo 402 - Richard Hills (Y), Peter Napier (NR)
9 - Memo 352 -
Dave Woody (C)
,
Chris Wilson (C)
, Dick Plambeck (N)
10 - Memo 434 -
Stephane Guilloteau (C)
so, as yet no response from:
Lee Mundy - 422
Ed Fomalont - 427
Jose Cernicharo - 415
Peter Napier - 402
and awaiting agreed upon reviews from:
Steve Myers - 423
Geoff Blake - 423
Douglas Bock - 422
John Richer - 415, 404, 403
Richard Hills - 402
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AIPS++ - Myers
Is the Sceptical Review scheduled yet?
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Configuration - Holdaway
Conway has
developed the antenna pad specifications.
The Configuration Group has delivered the configuration plan to the Site
Group, and surveyors are at work at Chajnantor. For photos, please see
this Configuration realization page. There was some discussion
of shortcomings of this plan at the Science IPT telecon today.
Mark has material on the reconfiguration cycles here. There was much discussion
of reconfiguration last week, collected in the link.
A joint Transporter-Foundation-Site-Configuration Telecon was held
last Friday to discuss transporter issues.
The most critical are question that relate to the compact array
design, which must be completely frozen by Jan 31st, so M3
has time to produce a construction documemt for April 1st
in time for tendering. Items arising:
Pad spacing--should it differ from antenna spacing?
In the version C of the configuration document
(ALMA-90.02.00.00-001-C-SPE)
the main spec is that the pad positions 'as built' should be within
a circle of radius 5cm of the nominal position (which is
measured relative to the array centre). The Site IPT thinks this
to be a realisable goal (the problem is to do with the
concrete setting). Assuming a mechanical non-interference distance of 15m
this spec is sufficient for all except 4 pairs of antennas whose
nominial seperation is less than 15.1m.
No final common foundation design exists for the compact array
Therefore JC proposes increasing distance to 15.15m.
The consequence on the science would of course be a surface
brightness sensitivity loss of 1.02 and 4% extra intregration
time to get a given sensitivty. There would be no real effect on
the beam or uv properties of the slightly larger configurations
which use some of the compact array pads.
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Site Characterization
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Other
The JAO has decided to compile reports on a quarterly basis, rather
than monthly.
A
NA bimonthly report for January will be due soon for NSF. When the end of
Feb arrives, this will be amplified by Feb activities and EU
items and forwarded to the JAO as this text.
Please send materials to HAW for NA.
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SMA News...
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Upcoming Meetings - Wootten
JUN 22-27, 2003 2003 IEEE AP-S INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM AND
USNC/CNC/URSI NATIONAL RADIO SCIENCE MEETING
JUL 13-26, 2003 Twenty-Fifth
General Assembly of the IAU
JUL 22/25, 2003 IAU
Symposium (221): Star Formation at High Angular Resolution,
Sydney, Australia. Tyler Bourke is a co-chair of the scientific
organizing committee. Good opportunity to show ALMA capabilities.
SEP 22-26, 2003 4th
Cologne-Bonn-Zermatt-Symposium on The Dense Interstellar Medium in Galaxies
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Travel
Oh, always
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