BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO 13 Feb 2006 - 27 Feb 2006 ******************************** THIS FORTNIGHT**************************** The President's FY2007 budget was delivered on 7 February. An excerpt from this dealing with ALMA may be found at: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/NSFALMA-FY2007extract.pdf $47,890,000 is requested for ALMA Construction. As may be seen in the ALMA Funding Profile Table, ALMA Operations and Maintenance funds begin to phase in in a major way for the first time in this budget. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, a facility with a great deal of scientific synergy with ALMA was zeroed out in the FY07 budget request from the President. $48M had been expected for this program. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The ALMA Director is pleased to inform everyone that Claus Dierksmeier has been appointed to become the Leader for the ALMA Site IPT. Claus has accepted this nomination, and his appointment is effective immediately. Claus has been easing into this position since 2005 Aug 1, taking over Jörg Eschwey, who is gradually retiring. Welcome, Claus! And thanks, Jörg, for the critical groundwork you have laid. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Panel Report for the ACA System Preliminary Design Review held in Nov. 10-11, 2005 at Mitaka, Tokyo, was submitted to the JAO 2006 Feb 7. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 OSF: Retender bid opening for the OSF has been scheduled. Evaluation of bids for 5-10 foundations in the Vertex laydown area proceeds. Road construction is now at km 41. Contractor area earthwork to be completed 2006-Feb-15. There are 151 persons on the site of which 104 are in the site lodging facilities. AOS: 'Altiplanic Winter' has hit. Snow has blanketed the site for the past several days, halting activity there. AOS Technical Building shell to be finished 2006-Mar-20. Construction of the road to the summit of Chajnantor has begun. Santiago: 25 AIV positions approved for the 2006 hiring plan. Chilean AIV hires to begin soon. Wilson arrives at JAO for PS turno duty 21 Feb. A first earned value analysis report was issued by the JAO. TUC: Eric's Fine Food & Ice Cream at 1702 E. Speedway, birthplace of many an astrophysical or astroinstrumental idea, and of "Gentle Persuasion" ice cream, a concoction of oatmeal and prunes, is closing. ATF: Preparations continue for optical pointing tests; AEM will conduct tests of the AEC antenna in early March. AOC: Testing of the analogue IF Processor & LO2 has begun in the PSI system rack. After inspection and repair of many components, the spontaneous rebooting of the AEC antenna ACU has desisted. NTC: Band 3 (3mm) cartridge PAI scheduled at HIA for week of 6 March. All bins and backplanes installed in Correlator Quadrant 2. Erratum: the fiber length over which the photonics reference was propagated was incorrectly reported last week; it was 15 km. 100fs phase perfomance was demonstrated. *************************************************************************** DAILY CALENDAR (Times EDT ) see https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar Mon 13 Feb Tue 14 Feb Valentine's Day 10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon 4:00 PM-5:00 PM: NAScienceIPT teleconference (open to all interested parties) (434)296-7082 Wed 15 Feb 3:30 pm: Astrochemistry Group Meeting, U. Va. Thu 16 Feb 9:30 am: Management IPT telecon Fri 17 Feb Sat 18 Feb Sun 19 Feb Mon 20 Feb President's Day Holiday, United States Tue 21 Feb 10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon 4:00 PM-5:00 PM: NAScienceIPT teleconference (open to all interested parties) (434)296-7082 Wed 22 Feb Washington's Birthday 4:00 PM: ASAC Telecon Thu 23 Feb 9:00 AM: ALMA Board telecon Fri 24 Feb 2:00 PM: ANASAC Telecon Sat 25 Feb Sun 26 Feb ****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS **************************** Feb 22 2100UT ASAC Telecon Feb 23 1500UT ALMA Board telecon Feb 24 1900UT ANASAC Telecon March 21-22 all day AMAC Meeting Kyoto, Japan March 23-24 all day ALMA Board Meeting Kyoto, Japan June 13-14 all day ALMA Board Meeting OSF November 9-10 all day ALMA Board Meeting Madrid TBD Nov 13-16 all day Science with ALMA: a new era for Astrophysics Madrid ******************************* TECHNICAL NEWS **************************** ALMA presentations at the January URSI meeting are available on line through links at https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/14Feb06Agenda # Crystal's talk on submillimeter imaging (SMA & ALMA) # Mark's talk on Fast Switching (ALMA) # Sanjay's talk on high-dynamic range imaging # Urvashi's talk on wide-band continuum imaging --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ******************************ALSO OF INTEREST***************************** SMA Call for Proposals The Submillimeter Array (SMA), the radio interferometer on Mauna Kea built by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, makes available a fraction of the observing time to principal investigators from the astronomical community (worldwide). The proposal deadline is 9 March 2006 for the observing semester 1 May 2006 through 31 October 2006. More information, technical details, and instructions and tools for proposal preparation and submission can be found at http://sma1.sma.hawaii.edu/, the SMA Observer Center web site. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anne Dutrey informs us of a CNRS post-doctoral position at the Observatory of Bordeaux. The position is opened for two years and will start on september 2006 at the Observatory of Bordeaux. The application deadline is June 2006. The position is dedicated to the modelling of chemistry in proto-planetary disks in order to interpret observational data obtained with the IRAM array. Interested people can read the dedicated CNRS web page http://www.k-projects.com/cnrs_postdocs/public/departement_details.php?IdDpt=9&Dep=SDU&NumOffre=2&Langue=en --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Simon Radford reports on the CCAT telescope possibly to be sited at Chajnantor: Here are links to our study report on the Cornell Caltech Atacama Telescope (CCAT) and to the presentations from our review meeting January 17-18. Report: http://tinyurl.com/akzwr Presentations: http://tinyurl.com/8bqka --------------------------------------------------------------------------- IRAM Call for Proposals The next deadline for submission of observing proposals on IRAM telescopes, both the interferometer and the 30m, is 09 March 2006, 17:00 CET (UT + 1 hour) The scheduling period extends from 15 May 2005 to 15 November 2005, covering roughly the summer period at our observatories. Proposals should be submitted through the web-based submission facility. Instructions are found on the web page at URL: http://www.iram.fr/GENERAL/submission/submission.html The submission facility will be opened about three weeks before the proposal deadline. Proposal form pages and the 30m time estimator are available now. See: http://www.iram.fr/GENERAL/calls/calls_s06/calls_s06.html *************************************************************************** Please send information for upcoming calendars by Friday evening of the preceding biweekly period to Jennifer Neighbours or Al Wootten via e-mail (jneighbo@nrao.edu or awootten@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