BIWEEKY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO 26 Jan - 9 Feb 2009 ******************************** THIS FORTNIGHT************************* On 6 February 2009, the first Vertex production antenna was conditionally accepted by the project. The antenna, designed and built by the Vertex division of General Dynamics Corp. under contract with the Associated Universities, Inc., was moved by the transporter a short time later to a foundation at the Operations Support Facility (OSF) nearby for further testing. Pointing tests of the antenna began immediately. It will be equipped with the Front End recently delivered from the East Asian Front End Integration Center in Taiwan. ALMA officials expect the pace of antenna acceptance to accelerate. "We have nine (North American) antennas on site already," said Adrian Russell, NRAO’s ALMA Project Director, "and following handover of Number Three we plan to get one through the test procedure each month. Additional North American antennas will be arriving in Chile at a rate of one every two months, and General Dynamics is on track to complete delivery of these systems within days of the original schedule." --------------------------------------------------------------------- On January 22, 2009 scientists and engineers at the ALMA Operations Support Facility (OSF) achieved astronomical validation of an ALMA continuum system. The Moon was detected in three of the four bands available in the Front End, tuned to 100 GHz, 240 GHz and 310 GHz. The ALMA antenna accepted last month from Japan was used with the receiver assembly from the Front End Integration Center assembled at the NRAO Technology Center in Charlottesville, and a Back End assembled at the Socorro, NM Array Operations Center. The observations were controlled from the OSF Technical Facility supplied by ESO. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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): Very productive CIPT/AIV/CSV/Ops meeting was held in Santiago Jan 22-23. A CASA tutorial was held at ESO/Santiago Jan 26-27. ALMA Science Advisory Committee members lunched with ALMA staff at the Alsacia offices on 30 January. New science team members Denis Barkats, Juan Cortes, Ruediger Kniessl, Mark Rawlings and Baltasar Vila Vilaro arrived in Chile at the beginning of January AOS (Array Ops Site, 16570ft altitude): To date, 46 foundation have received structural concrete. Earthwork for the excavation of the ACA foundations has been completed. OSF (Ops Support Facility, 9600ft altitude): ALMA Science Advisory Committee met face to face in the OSF TB 28-29 Jan. Upon acceptance of the first Vertex antenna, it was transported to the OSF Technical Facility and placed upon foundation TF6. Vx #2 Completed installation of new linear sensor devices and alignment/tuning of sensors is in process. Vx6 photogrammetry complete. Vx7 pedestal and BUS have been mated; panel installation in progress. The Vertex antenna #9 Pedestal and Backup Structure (BUS) arrived and are awaiting s free antenna foundation to begin assembly. Shipping of elements of the first AEM antenna from Antwerp is expected 2009 Feb 10. The upgrading of the C pavilion in the ALMA Camp is ongoing, and completion is expected by late January 2009. NTC: Successful first operation of the LORTM as part of the NA FEIC test and measurement system. Assembly of the third correlator quadrant continued. All bins and motherboards have been installed. Fan installation is now in progress. AOC: Ahipping Antenna Articles (AA) AA3 and AA4 to OSF is anticipated 2009-01-29. The master laser, slave laser, and pCLO from the ATF along with ATF test equipment will accompany this AA shipment. NAASC: CASA patch 2.3.1 released. Approximately 200 new users have registered and downloaded CASA since its public release in July 2008. Generation of science-based white papers for the US decadal review supporting the ALMA development plan continued. GB: A. Wootten reported an update on the status of ALMA. Elsewhere: The second production Band 9 (.35mm) Cartridge is ready for acceptance. A calendar of NAASC events may be found at: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/naasc/alma_calendar.shtml *************************************************************************** DAILY CALENDAR (Times EDT/EST ) see https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar ****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS ************************* Jan 28-29 ASAC f2f OSF. Feb 4-5 Band 7 Manufacturing Readiness Review, IRAM Feb 9 Water Vapor Radiometer Test Readiness Review Feb 11-12 Management IPT f2f Feb 12 Band 3 Manufacturing Readiness Review, HIA Feb 19 EU FEIC PAI for engineering model Front End. Mar 11-13 ALMA Board meeting Mar 18 Band 4 (2mm) PAI NAOJ Mar 18 Band 8 (.6mm) 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) Apr 16 Herschel launch Jun 8-12 mm and submm Astronomy at High Angular Resolution, ASIAA ******************************* TECHNICAL NEWS ************************* ALMA Memo # 585: Loss of Gold Plated Waveguides at 210-280 GHz Authors: A. R. Kerr, C. Litton, G. Petencin, D. Koller, and M. Shannon Abstract: The loss at 210-280 GHz of room temperature waveguides plated with BDT 200 bright gold and Pur-A-Gold 125 soft gold is within ~10% of the theoretical loss based on the DC conductivity of pure gold and the classical skin effect. This is not the case for some other types of gold plating meeting the same ASTM (or MIL) specs but in which a trace of nickel is used as a brightener. View a pdf version of ALMA Memo #585 at: http://www.alma.nrao.edu/memos/html-memos/alma585/memo585.pdf *****************************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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Herschel has been flown across the Atlantic, it arrived in Cayenne on 12 February 2009. The launch campaign in the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou is now underway. The nominal launch date is 16 April 2009. *************************************************************************** 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