BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO 12 Mar 2007 - 26 Mar 2007 ******************************** THIS FORTNIGHT*************************** On 2007 March 10 a ceremony was held at the Operations Support Facility (OSF) to celebrate the completion of the roof structure on the OSF technical facility building. Held in the nascent OSF warehouse, the crowd of workers and others hear speeches from, among others, the Mayor of San Pedro de Atacama, Sandra Berna. The facility, which will host about 100 people during operations, consists of three main buildings: the technical building, hosting the control centre of the observatory, the antenna assembly building, including four antenna foundations for testing and maintenance purposes, and the warehouse building, including mechanical workshops. The building is slated for completion by January 2008. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The first major piece of the first ALMA production antenna has arrived at the OSF and other parts of this antenna have been shipped from VertexRSI and are in transit to Chile. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Past issues of this Calendar may be viewed at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html See also the JAO ALMA Calendar overview at: http://www.alma.cl/alma_project *************************************************************************** General Happenings Photos of activity may be found at: http://www.alma.nrao.edu/almanews/almagallery/index.html Sky: Venus dominates the evening sky. Jupiter reaches quadrature in the early morning sky this fortnight. Santiago: Bids for the architectural designs for the Santiago Central Office are due. AOS (Array Ops Site, 16570ft altitude): With an email sent 2007 Mar 14, IT Manager Saldias established internet communications between the AOS and the rest of the world. Congratulations to the IT team. Much of the period has seen a few mm of precipitable water above the AOS but there have been a few periods with as little as 0.5mm. OSF (Ops Support Facility, 9600ft altitude): There are 430 people working at the OSF site. ATF: Holography will soon resume, with acceptance tests on the Vertex antenna. Optical pointing will resume with the AEC antenna. NAASC: CASA simulator development will be pursued as McMullin and Kumar visit the NAASC. A calendar of NAASC events may be found at: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/naasc/calendar/calendar.php A number of ALMA-related science discussions will occur during the next fortnight: Preregistration for the workshop 'Transformational Science with ALMA: Through Disks to Stars and Planets' to be held 22-24 June 2007 is under way: See http://www.cv.nrao.edu/naasc/disk07/ *************************************************************************** DAILY CALENDAR (Times EDT/EST ) see https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar Mon 12 Mar - f2f IPT meeting, Santiago, concludes. Tue 13 Mar - 10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon Wed 14 Mar - 11:00AM - Science Software Requirements telecon Thu 15 Mar - Fri 16 Mar - Sat 17 Mar - Sun 18 Mar - Mon 19 Mar - Tue 20 Mar - 10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon Wed 21 Mar - 10:30 am: Science IPT Telecon 8:07 pm: Spring arrives Thu 22 Mar - 4:00 pm: David Wilner Harvard-Smithsonian, CfA "Protoplanetary Disks: Analogs of the Early Solar System" 7:30 pm: John Mather, GSFC "From the Big Bang to the Nobel Prize" Fri 32 Mar - 3:00pm - Star Formation discussion group, NAASC. Special guest Y. Shirley. 4:00pm - Physics Colloquium: John Mather, GSFC Sat 24 Mar - Sun 25 Mar - JAO/Executive meeting, Tokyo Mon 12 Mar - ALMA Board meeting, Tokyo ****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS **************************** Mar 9-12 all day IPT F2F MEETING Chile Mar 25-27 ALMA Board Meeting Tokyo Apr 4 1430 UT ASAC Telecon ******************************* TECHNICAL NEWS *************************** *****************************ALSO OF INTEREST***************************** *************************************************************************** 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