BIWEEKY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO 12-26 January 2009 ******************************** THIS FORTNIGHT************************* An engineering model Front End from the East Asian Front End Integration Center (EA FEIC) achieved provisional acceptance site (PAS) on 2008 Dec 17 with support from Denis Urbain from the NA FEIC. This is the second engineering model front end at the OSF; the first, from the NA FEIC, has been installed and is cold on the newly accepted MELCO antenna. That antenna was moved to antenna pad TF6 at the OSF on January 8. The assembly integration and verification phase of ALMA enters full throttle with this fist accepted antenna at the OSF. Optical pointing observations on the Vertex No 1 antenna continue as well as analysis activities in advance of the Acceptance Review to occur next fortnight. --------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Past issues of this Calendar may be viewed at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html *************************************************************************** General Happenings Photos of activity may be found at NRAO eNews: http://www.nrao.edu/news/newsletters/ Sky: Comet Lulin has reached closest approach to the Sun and will grace morning skies as it approaches Earth on its way back to the chilly outer solar system. Venus grows brilliant as the evening star--through modest telescopes one can make out its thinning crescent in the coming months. SCO (Santiago Central Office): An AIV/CSV/CIPT/Ops meeting will occur in Santiago. ALMA Science Advisory Committee members will meet ALMA staff at Alsacia on 30 January. AOS (Array Ops Site, 16570ft altitude): To date, 39 foundations have received structural concrete. Near the center of the array, work continues on the 22 foundations for the ACA, many of which are packed very closely. Nearby, the grading for the Central Cluster is approaching completion. The correlator continues to run in the Technical Building. Implementation of the 1-msec continuum integration mode was successfully tested; support of 2-, 4-, and 8-msec integrations is in development. According to a study of Chajnantor weather conditions at APEX and on Cerro Chajnantor for 2008 from S. Radford, 2008 was an excellent year. Levels of precipitable water vapor as low os 0.2mm were observed about 10% of the time at APEX. OSF (Ops Support Facility, 9600ft altitude): The ninth Vertex antenna is expected to arrive the week of 19 January. Concrete has been poured for a 7th foundation in the Vertex Site Erection Facility (SEF) compound. John Shutt, an engineer from the Joint Astronomy Centre in Hilo, has been hired to support antenna work at the OSF beginning early Feb. The contractor for the OSF Technical Facilities, VVMO, operated from a camp which they built. The camp was handed over by VVMO to ESO on 22-Dec-2008 soon after its purchase. First shipments of antenna components from AEM for the European antenna are arriving. Holography system #2 was shipped to the OSF on 26 Nov and PAS was completed. The ALMA Science Advisory Committee will meet at the OSF 28-29 Jan. An interim control room has been set up in the Eastern TF lab corridor. Elsewhere: A special session on ALMA Status and Science was held at the North American Radioscience meeting in Boulder. Talks by Emerson, diFrancesco, Freund, Kern, Nikolic, Langley, Shepherd, Webber, Welch and Wootten were presented; they are available at: https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/ALMA/UsRm A Radionet algorithms workshop was held in Oxford. Good Band 10 (.35mm) RF performance has been successfully demonstrated at Mitaka using a NbTiN-based SIS mixer with an improved circuit design. Relatively low-current-density Nb/AlOx/Nb junctions (8 kA/cm2) were employed. At LO frequencies from 800 GHz to 940 GHz, corrected receiver noise temperatures were below 240 K at an operating physical temperature of 4 K, meeting a specification. Production receiver cartridges have begun rolling off the line. The first Band 9 (.45mm) production unit passed provisional acceptance in house. NAASC: ALMA was featured in a booth at the AAS meeting in Long Beach. At the NSF Town Hall, Blain summarized the ALMA Development program plans. At the NRAO Town Hall, a capsule review of ALMA status was given. A new brochure on ALMA was distributed. A Notice of Intent was filed with the Astronomy and Astrophysics 2010 Decadal Survey Committee covering ALMA Development projects. An ANASAC telecon was held, with a focus on ALMA proposal review. A calendar of NAASC events may be found at: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/naasc/calendar/calendar.php *************************************************************************** DAILY CALENDAR (Times EDT/EST ) see https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar ****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS ************************* Jan 15 ALMA Management IPT Meeting Jan 28-29 ASAC f2f OSF. Feb 4-5 Band 7 Manufacturing Readiness Review, IRAM Feb 9 Water Vapor Radiometer Test Readiness Review Feb 12 Band 3 Manufacturing Readiness Review, HIA Feb 19 EU FEIC PAI for engineering model Front End. Mar 18 Band 4 (2mm) PAI NAOJ Mar 24-27 ALMA and ELTs: A Deeper, Finer View of the Universe, ESO Apr 15-16 NA FEIC Operational Readiness Review (Charlottesville) Jun 8-12 mm and submm Astronomy at High Angular Resolution, ASIAA ******************************* TECHNICAL NEWS ************************* *****************************ALSO OF INTEREST*************************** CARMA Proposals Due Observing time with CARMA is allocated in response to proposals judged on scientific merit. The current Call for Proposals for general and target of opportunity (TOO) time is for observations covering the period July 1, 2009 - November 30, 2009. Proposals are due on March 18. Proposals requesting Director's discretionary time may be submitted at any time. See: http://www.mmarray.org/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SMA Proposals Due Following the direction of the SMA steering committee, the CfA SMA Time Allocation Committee (TAC) solicits proposals for observations in the 230, 345, 400, and 690 GHz bands for the period 2009 May 16 - 2009 Nov 15. The deadline for submitting proposals is 2009 March 5 (16:00 EST = 11:00 HST). In addition, large (legacy) proposals must be preceded by a brief "Notice of Intent" by 2009 February 26, 16:00 EST. See http://sma1.sma.hawaii.edu/call.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Several ALMA positions are available at the JAO (Santigo). Details for all positions may be viewed at: http://www.alma.cl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal deadlines for CARMA, SMA, NRAO. *************************************************************************** Please send information for upcoming calendars by Friday evening of the preceding biweekly period to Jennifer Neighbours or Al Wootten via e-mail (jneighbo at nrao.edu or awootten at nrao.edu). The calendar will be issued between late Friday and sometime on Monday by e-mail to all NRAO scientific staff members and anyone else interested. A specific mailing list, alma-info, has been created for anyone wishing to receive it. Past issues are available at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html