Report for ALMA Calibration and Imaging February - March 2002 Progress Report Overview Wootten, working with Blake, Cox and Fukui organized the agenda for the ASAC face-to-face meeting, collected reading materials and distributed them via the web. He and Mangum attended the ASAC meeting in Tokyo in late March. Wootten worked with the ASAC to generate the final report which they submitted to the ACC. During February and March the recommendations from the ALMA Configuration Design Review held in Socorro in January were approved, submitted to management and implementation begun. One recommendation, that a leader of the configuration group be appointed, was fulfilled when John Conway was named leader and began work on the configuration. As negotiations with Chile for obtaining access to the site are in a ripening phase, work concentrated on one suggestion of the review, that long configurations utilizing the road to the OSF be considered as a cost-saving and convenient alternative to the Chascon ring design which places antennas on rough terrain far from array center. Holdaway and Otarola pursued definition of this design. Work continued on revision of Project Book chapters. Plans were laid for discussions on Calibration of ALMA, and on the ALMA Configuration during ALMA Week in April. The agenda for the meeting had reached near-final form by the end of the month, for distribution early in April. Among the Education and Public Outreach activities of the Science group was the Tokyo public meeting at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, activities with young scientists and presentation of ALMA at a conference. Mangum produced a poster on ALMA and stellar debris disks for the April 11-13 symposium "Debris Disks and the Formation of Planets: a Symposium in Memory of Fred Gillett". ALMA Software and Simulations Myers produced the ALMA Offline Data Processing Requirements document for the software group and incorporated ImCal and referees comments into the final version of the document. Holdaway worked on an 85 pointing VLA 20cm D and C configuration mosaic of the Galactic Center, together with Harvey Liszt. This mosaic is very challenging: it requires a dynamic range of over 1000:1 to get down to galactic confusion. The bright source Sgr A is the brightest source in most fields, even those which see Sgr A in the primary beam sidelobes. Dealing with a bright source in the unmodeled parts of the primary beam such that its sidelobes (ie, PSF sidelobes) don't spoil the image is the challenge. Eventually, a problem to be addressed will be the addition of total power, which will change the character of this image as much as fixing Sgr A's sidelobes. Holdaway also produced an ALMA simulation of an observation of the Mundy debris disk for the Tucson symposium. Site and Configuration Site Characterization The Site Characterization group published ALMA Memo No. 413, "Physical Parameters Of The Chajnantor Science Preserve", by A.Otarola (ESO), D.Hofstadt (ESO), S.J.E. Radford (NRAO), S. Sakamoto (NAOJ/NRO). This document summarizes previous studies of several physical parameters of the Chajnantor and Pampa La Bola sites: seismicity and volcanic hazard, geology, water availability, underground temperature fluctuations, and soil resistivity. Other parameters, such as the availability and quality of aggregates, the underground water supply potential, and the detailed characteristics of the weathering layer remains to be studied. Radford continued to deal with communication on the Inmarsat ISDN link, which now works. A 52 x 35 km map of Chajnantor and its western approaches was made available in acrobat (pdf) and autocad (dwg) formats. This map combines two earlier maps of these areas made in 2001 July and November. A digital elevation model (FITS) will appear in due course. Butler worked on hygrometer data from the site. He also tackled radiosonde data, to be written up as an extension of his IAU Morocco talk. Water vapor radiometry for the VLA/EVLA also occupied some of his time. The tipper failed 19 December. On February 12, R. Rivera (ESO) repaired the 225 GHz tipper. Data through February 15 was processed and posted on the web. Configuration Wootten polished the Configuration CDR committee report and transmitted it to the AEC. Please see: the approved committee report at: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/configurationcdrrecs.txt In the first of its action items, the committee recommended that the project should appoint a leader of the configuration design process as quickly as possible. The leader will guide the design process, including iteration of the design with the antenna/transport groups and the site development group. The project will invest in this leader the resources necessary to be able to push the process ahead as a top priority without distraction from other commitments. ALMA/EU has arranged for John Conway to join the ALMA Project for the next two years to assume configuration design leadership role. In his role, Conway will work: 1) To ensure that all the elements of the array design - compact, intermediate and large are integrated into one coherent plan. 2) To make sure that the final design is consistent with the PDR and CDR recommendations. 3) Act as the contact person for engineering and site development in determining the interaction/interfaces with other parts of the project- including the important interfaces of transporter design and roads and services. 4) Maintain the configuration documentation. We're looking forward to an interesting and collegial discussion of the array as we move toward a final configuration design. We anticipate a timely implementation of the rest of the recommendations of the committee. Holdaway worked on a multi-resolution array optimization algorithm. This algorithm could be applied to the compact configuration to optimize the sidelobes in a new way. At the CDR Otarola had noted that the access road to the site from the OSF might be used for a larger Y-shaped array, taking advantage of existing roads and eliminating the necklace around Chascon which had characterized earllier work. Work progressed on this study toward a memo to be issued in April for the ALMA Week discussions. Holdaway installed Frederic Boone's array optimization software, studying it in hopes of applying this wonderful algorithm to the Y+ configuration. Calibration Mangum calibrated and imaged some 3mm OVRO Millimeter Array data that Al Wootten and he acquired. The item of interest in this is that OVRO uses a Sybase-based database system to do their array data calibration. A calibration meeting was planned for ALMA week, including what site characterization group can do, water vapor monitoring, IRMA (deployment perhaps in May), and ATF testing plans (semi-transparent vane, hot loads in the subreflector and the photonic phase calibration system). Holdaway also began work on overhauling the Imaging and Calibration chapters of the project book. Mangum participated in the ATF/AEG meetings in Grenoble, planning testing of the prototype antennas. He also went to Lund to an SPIE conference on the Integrated Modelling of Telescopes. Mangum also wrote a "primer" for the ATF groupware package Share360. Outreach and Public Education As an adjunct activity to the face-to-face meeting at Mitaka, the ASAC held an ALMA Science Day for the general public at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation located at the waterfront of Tokyo. This occured on the Spring Equinox, a holiday in Japan, and was well-attended. Talks were given by ASAC members Y. Fukui, G. Blake and P. Cox, accompanied by viewgraphs in Japanese or by simultaneous translation. At the end, questions were answered at a panel session. Excellent questions were posed to the panel one audience member inquired as to where he could sign up to work on ALMA! The even was judged a success by all. Both English and Japanese versions of the talks will be made available for presentation at other venues. Mangum served as a judge for an APEX/SIFE (Academic Program for Excellence/Students in Free Enterprise) leadership competition. Mangum reported that 12 year old kids produced PowerPoint and video presentations that made the presentations he developed look elementary. Following up on a suggestion from Simon Radford, Mangum put the NRAO public outreach presentations on the Tucson web page. Look under "Education and Public Outreach", then "Public Outreach Presentations". Mangum also wrote an NRAO Tucson REU web page. See http://www.tuc.nrao.edu/~jmangum/reu. Wootten coordinated distribution of materials for ALMA Week, which includes a public session at a science museum in Spain. ALMA brochures in Spanish were delivered there, along with ALMA giveaway items. Wootten continued work on an ALMA article for a book on "Sensing Science and Technology at Terahertz Frequency". He presented an ALMA poster for the "Second Workshop on New Concepts for Far-IR Submillimeter Space Astronomy" at The University of Maryland on March 7-8, also attended by Radford. An article on ALMA was contributed to that conference. Science IPT ALMA Memos 413 Physical Parameters Of The Chajnantor Science Preserve A.Otarola (ESO), D.Hofstadt (ESO), S.J.E. Radford (NRAO), S. Sakamoto (NAOJ/NRO) Meetings Held ALMA/NA Imaging and Calibration meetings and list of topics discussed 5 February 2002 News; ASAC Meeting; Configuration CDR, Project Book and ALMA week. 12 February 2002 News; Configuration CDR Recomendations, Project Book and ALMA week proto schedule. 19 February 2002 News; ASAC Agenda, Project Book Update (v5.5 ready) and ALMA week proto schedule. 5 March 2002 News; ALG, DH, AEC Meetings, Jan-Dec NSF Report, ASAC Agenda, Project Book Update (v5.5 ready) and ALMA week proto schedule. 12 March 2002 News; Meetings, Jan-Dec NSF Report, ASAC, Project Book Update (v5.5 ready) and ALMA week proto schedule. 26 March 2002 News; Meetings, NSF Report, ASAC, Project Book Update (v5.5 update) and ALMA week proto schedule. ALMA Science Advisory Committee Meetings and list of topics discussed Telecon on 6 February 2002: Project status, face-to-face meeting agenda, Configuration CDR report Telecon on 6 March 2002: News, face-to-face meeting, ASAC Charge Face-to-face meeting Tokyo 19-20-21 March 2002 ALMA Co-ordinating Committee Meetings Telecon on 19 February 2002 Attended by Wootten Telecon on 19 March 2002 Attended by Wootten