BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO Dec 19, 2005 -- Jan 2, 2006 ******************************** THIS FORTNIGHT***************************** 330 astronomers, mostly from Latin America, met in Pucon, Chile for the 11th Latin American Reional IAU Meeting. Schreier and Wootten gave ALMA talks, to an excellent reception. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The international delta ALMA Cost Review for the cost of a project in which there are two antenna vendors will be held 26/27 January in Washington. The North American Delta Cost Review (NADCR) will follow 30 Jan thru 1 Feb, but be largely separate from, the ALMA Delta Cost Review (ADCR). The ADCR will report to the ALMA Board and will heavily utilize the personnel of the original cost review panel. The NACR will report to NSF, and will consist of an essentially separate group of reviewers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Seiichi Sakamoto has successfully installed the i-CAN camera atop the network container at the OSF. He expects to have an internal first light event from 3:00 a.m. on December 9 and from 3:30 a.m. and on, ALMA-J will open the camera for everyone in the world with internet access. This is a camera to show interested folks a view of the southern sky on the other side of the world from Japan, i.e. at night. The English page is still in preparation but you will find a hint at http://rika.educ.kumamoto-u.ac.jp/i-CAN/ . Click the red circle at ALMA for a pop-up window and see what will happen. This is a view of the night time sky; so it does not work in daytime (also apparently not on Macs). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 Santiago: PMCS and JAO making preparations for ALMA Delta Cost Review. AOS: Eduardo just sent along a photo taken today of AOS construction progress: https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/20Dec05A ATF: AOC: Rework of the central LO rack and rewiring of the Vertex analog rack will be completed; pursuit of signal continuity from the analog IF input to the correlator will continue. NAASC: The first of the ALMA Antenna Evaluation Group (AEG) results colloquia will be held 3 Jan at 4pm Eastern, with all sites connected. 1. *Overview* /(Mangum)/: General overview of the antenna evaluation performance results. ******************************************************************************* DAILY CALENDAR (Times EDT ) see https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar Mon 19 December Tue 20 December Wed 21 December Thu 22 11:00 am Board telecon Fri 23 Holiday (USA) Sat 24 Sun 25 Merry Christmas! Mon 26 Holiday (Germany, Chile, USA) Tue 27 Wed 28 Thu 29 Fri 30 Sat 31 Sun 1 January Happy New Year! Sun 2 January Holiday (USA) ****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS **************************** ALMA Calendar--https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar * Dec 22 -- ALMA Board * Jan 4-7 -- URSI/NA, Boulder * Jan 4 --- ASAC telecon * Jan 6 -- ANASAC telecon * Jan 9 -- ALMA Town Meeting, AAS * Jan 9-12 -- AAS meeting, Washington * Jan 12-14 -- ALMA Zmachines workshop * Jan 28-29 ASAC face-to-face ******************************* 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@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