Science with ALMA

The Proceedings of the Conference 'Science with ALMA' are in press and
expected to appear in September.  Unedited manuscripts are (mostly) available
at www.alma.nrao.edu/conference  From this and other gleanings and excellent
science case was presented as part of the ESO construction proposal; it
is available on the WWW at http://iram.fr/guillote

With the entry of Japan into the project more resources are available to
increase the science throughput.  Certain items originally within the
scope of ALMA but placed outside the scope by bilateral project funding
may be restored to the scope of the multilateral project.  These include
receiver bands (1, 4, 8 and 10) and a compact array (Atacama Compact Array or
ACA) for providing precise
submillimeter images.  An improved correlator is also among these items.
The ALMA Science Advisory Committee (ASAC) has provided documentation on the
desirability of these scientific enhancements.

In the past year, the ALMA Configuration has approached its semifinal
shape.  At the PDR the review committee found that a flexible reconfiguration 
scheme is preferred with antennas arrayed in a self-similar fashion at
Chajnantor.  A large number of basic simulations on a wide range of objects
was assembled, from which it was clear that without combination of total
power and interferometric data precise imaging was not feasible.  Several
simulations using independent restoration algorithms demonstrated that the
ACA may remedy this problem.  Further studies are under way with a goal of
providing the ASAC material upon which to make a recommendation to the project
at its September meeting.

Just recently, the Calibration Strategy PDR has concluded in Cambridge.
The ASAC established a goal for ALMA to achieve 1% calibration accuracy.
Several memos have suggested that although difficult it should be possible to
achieve this, at least in the millimeter wavelength regime. (Two line review of
Calibration PDR results).

ALMA Computing has assembled a Science Software Requirements Committee
which has issued a document describing software to be employed in the operation
of ALMA (ALMA Computing Memo 11).  The Committee made certain assumptions on 
how ALMA would be operated, detailed in ALMA Memo No. 367.  The Committee
assumes that all proposals will be treated in the same way, feeling it would
be exceedingly tricky to reconcile ratings made by several local allocation
committees.  

The project is interested in how the Users feel they want to interact with
ALMA.  In the past, this committee has expressed its wish that a single
unified TAC exist.  The ALMA Operations plan is being defined, but the
NRAO Users, the ASAC and the SSR group agree on this point, with other opinions
yet to be harvested.

In the SSR view, the Observer-PI will be contacted by email when the
dynamic scheduler has queued his/her observation..  The Observer-PI would be
the first to look at the 'final' science data from the error-free calibration
and quick look pipelines.  Owing to the dependency of achieved sensitivity on
weather, the PI may be allocated a sensitivity level rather than a fixed
portion of time.  The program may have embedded in it breakpoints at which
the Observer-PI wishes to interact with the data, perhaps changing the 
program within a predefined set of rules.

After pipeline processing, data will flow to the archives, one of which will
be located in the U. S. in the draft plan.  This will include raw data,
calibration data and images produced by the pipeline and all associated
data.  Assistance will be provided to astronomers in the use of the archive.
The character of access and assistance will be characterized with input
from the NRAO User's committee and other groups.  

We'd like to launch the initial solicitation of that input now.

1) Although this is only an outline plan, still very much under discussion
is its general outline wat the user community in North America wants?

2) What would you like to have at the archive--would you envision personal
interaction or only data retrieval?  What level of 'friend' support?

3) Would you need funding to use it effectively?  If so, what sort--page
charges and travel support or grant support awarded on a competitive basis?