BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO 26 Feb 2007 - 12 Mar 2007 ******************************** THIS FORTNIGHT************************* Two ALMA operations reviews have been successfully completed. AUI President Ethan Schreier and NRAO Director Fred Lo commented: "One review was an international review of the ALMA Operations Plan; the other was an NSF review of our proposal for conducting North American ALMA Operations and for the NAASC. We must await receipt of the written reports before providing a definitive summary, but The initial debriefings by the review committees were extremely positive. "We thank everyone who worked so hard to make this review a success, and all who are continuing to make NRAO the world's forefront radio astronomy observatory. "The entire Observatory should be proud. "Thanks!" Ethan Schreier, AUI President Fred Lo, NRAO Director ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international telescope project, reached a major milestone on March 2, when two ALMA prototype antennas, one contracted by ESO and one by AUI, were first linked together as an integrated system to observe an astronomical object. The milestone achievement, technically termed "First Fringes," came at the ALMA Test Facility (ATF) on the grounds of the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico. The successful Saturn observation began at 7:13 p.m., U.S. Mountain Time Friday 2007 March 2 (0213 UTC Saturday). The planet's radio emissions at a frequency of 104 GigaHertz (GHz) were tracked by the ALMA system for more than an hour. "Our congratulations go to the dedicated team of scientists, engineers and technicians who produced this groundbreaking achievement for ALMA. Much hard work and many long hours went into this effort, and we appreciate it all. This team should be very proud today," said NRAO Director Fred K.Y. Lo. "With this milestone behind us, we now can proceed with increased confidence toward completing ALMA," he added. See http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2007/almafringes/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: A total lunar eclipse occurred Saturday 3 March, visible from all ALMA partners except those in East Asia. Jupiter reaches quadrature in the early morning sky this fortnight. Santiago: Planning continues for a meeting of the JAO and IPT leads, to occur in Chile 9-12 March. AOS (Array Ops Site, 16570ft altitude): Weather has not been good at the AOS the past week, with several millimeters of precipitable water reported by APEX. OSF (Ops Support Facility, 9600ft altitude): The roof is expected to go onto the OSF structure within the week. There are 396 people working at the OSF site. ATF: See top news above; first fringes have been demonstrated on Saturn thanks to the heroic efforts of the PSI team. TUC: Mark Holdaway has left NRAO to pursue his business interests. I want to thank him for all the wisdom and advice he has so generously provided over the years. Although he may be retiring, he'll always be the Wizard of ALMA to those of us in the Science IPT. We wish him every success with his business and hope, of course, that it is so successful he might still find time to provide us with advice on occasion. AOC: Tests will commence to evaluate the capabilities of the Common Astronomy Software Applications (CASA) package using the CASA libraries and the python user interface. It will also evaluate the documentation that has been written for users to process single dish and interferometric data. Representatives of all ALMA partners will participate. NTC (NRAO Technology Center, Charlottesville): The only special card needed for the upgraded 2-antenna prototype correlator is ready for fabrication. 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 at NAASC: 2 Mar - FUNA lunch Jeff Wagg, NRAO, Socorro "Using the GBT to search for a high-redshift population of submm luminous galaxies" 9 Mar - Star Formation Discussion, 4pm. 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 26 Feb - Tue 27 Feb - 10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon Wed 28 Feb - Thu 1 Mar - Fri 2 Mar - 12:00pm: Jeff Wagg Friday lunch Sat 3 Mar - Total Eclipse of the Moon, beginning 5:44pm EST. Sun 4 Mar - Mon 5 Mar - ESO Workshop 'Observing Other Planetary Systems', Vitacura Tue 6 Mar - ESO Workshop 'Observing Other Planetary Systems', Vitacura 10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon Wed 7 Mar - ESO Workshop 'Observing Other Planetary Systems', Vitacura 9:30 am: ASAC Telecon 1:00 pm: NAASC telecon Thu 8 Mar - ESO Workshop 'Observing Other Planetary Systems', Vitacura Fri 9 Mar - JAO/IPT Meeting, Santiago Sat 10 Mar - JAO/IPT Meeting, Santiago, moving to San Pedro Topping-out Ceremony, OSF Technical Building. Sun 11 Mar - Daylight Savings Time (DST) will begin this Sunday, March 11 at 2am in the U. S. Daylight savings time ends in Chile on this date. JAO/IPT Meeting, San Pedro, moving to Santiago Mon 12 Mar - JAO/IPT Meeting, Santiago ****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS **************************** Feb 27-8 all day ALMA Ops Plan Review NSF Mar 1 all day ALMA/NAASC Plan Review NSF Mar 7 1430UT ASAC Telecon Mar 9-12 all day IPT F2F MEETING Chile Mar 25-27 ALMA Board Meeting Tokyo ******************************* 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