BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO 27 Feb 2006 - 13 March 2006 ******************************** THIS FORTNIGHT**************************** Recent images of ALMA construction in Chile (mislabelled all at the AOS; the ones in which dirt is abundant are at the OSF) may be viewed at: http://www.alma.nrao.edu/almanews/almagallery.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: OSF Currently there are approximately 154 persons working at the site of which approximately 129 use the ALMA and Contractor’s lodging facilities. ESO FC approval session to approve the contract for the Technical Facilities at the OSF is on 02-Mar-2006. The VERTEX antenna area earthwork is substantially completed. OSF antenna foundations excavation is under way. Contracting for catering and cleaning services is under way. NSF approval has been obtained. The power station feasibility study update and subsequent design and engineering are underway. Fiber optic link OSF-AOS design budget proposals have been received. AOS: Rough Work for the establishment of the modified formation level of the permanent access road from km 28 to the AOS is in progress at km 42. AOS building foundations and shell construction is under way, finishing date is 20-Mar- 2006. Santiago: A couple of engineers will be hired on a casual basis (6mo) to help with detailing work in AIV while the main hiring plan comes into force. A JAO IT vacancy notice has been published. ACA System Preliminary Design Review report is released. See edm.alma.cl. The ASAC have written their report for delivery to the ALMA Board at their Kyoto meeting in March. JAO Project Scientist pro tem Tom Wilson is on station at the JAO. The SOC of the Madrid ALMA meeting has arrived at a final schedule, speakers invited, many acceptances. Bruno Ocampo has joined the local team--congratulations Cesar! TUC: Holography planning has progressed well through a series of meetings chaired by Emerson. AOC: Prototype System Integration (PSI) reports that the DTS (Digital Transmission System) is working perfectly; as a result, PSI is now testing synchronization between digitizer/demux and formatter. PSI reports that the two LLCs (Line Length Correctors) in the antenna racks both lock up and are now interchangeable. All parts of the LO sub-system are being readied for end-to-end phase drift tests at the end of February. ATF: Twelve production antenna racks arrived at the VLA from the vendor. Outfitting of the racks will take place in the Melco trailer at the ATF site, which NAOJ donated. The Vx optical pointing functional team had the main computing IPT attention in the last two weeks. NTC: Band6 (1.3mm) cartridge #1 in final configuration for testing. The preliminary end-to-end test of a Warm Cartridge Amplifier (WCA) connected through 15 km of fiber to a laser synthesizer in the BackEnd lab in Charlottesville has shown phase noise of 50 fsec rms, compared to the specification of 53 fsec. The first Data Transmission System Receiver card (DRX) was received and successfully tested in Correlator Quadrant #1. Mauna Kea: Water Vapour Radiometer (WVR): First measurements are being made in which the prototype WVR data is compared to SMA interferometer data. NAASC: A. Markwick-Kemper visiting U. Manchester re: ALMA archive lists of spectral lines, calibrators. *************************************************************************** DAILY CALENDAR (Times EDT ) see https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar Mon 27 Feb Tue 28 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 1 Mar 1:00 pm: NAASC telecon 3:30 pm: Astrochemistry Group Meeting, U. Va. All day: Subaru-ALMA Science working group meeting NAOJ-Subaru videolink. Thu 2 Mar 9:30 am: Management IPT telecon All day: ESO Finance Committee All day: Subaru-ALMA Science working group meeting NAOJ-Subaru videolink. Fri 3 Mar 6:00 am: Vertex Antenna Safety F2F Meeting, Santiago JAO 11:00 am: J. Gibson visit, NAASC-Abs amplitude calibration at CARMA Sat 4 Mar Sun 5 Mar Mon 6 Mar Crystal Brogan arrives in Charlottesville. Welcome, Crystal! Tue 7 Mar 10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon Wed 8 Mar 4:00 PM: ASAC Telecon Thu 9 Mar Fri 10 Mar T. Wilson departs JAO/Santiago. Sat 11 Mar Sun 12 Mar ****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS **************************** Mar 8 2100UT ASAC 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 Sept 22-23 evening Dave Matthews Band CV JPJ Arena opening 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 **************************** EVLA Memo #100: Correction of errors due to antenna power patterns during imaging by: S.Bhatnagar(NRAO, Socorro), T.J.Cornwell(ATNF, Sydney), K.Golap (NRAO, Socorro) Abstract: Errors in the observed visibilities can be classified as direction dependent and direction independent effects. Since direction dependent effects are different for each source, they must be corrected during imaging. This memo is concerned with the problem of correcting for such effects during imaging. We demonstrate that the effects of known receptor pointing errors (including polarization squint) can be corrected during imaging. An algorithm to solve for the antenna pointing errors is described in EVLA Memo 84. Errors due to such effects as well other time varying direction dependent effects are expected to limit the highest imaging dynamic range achievable for single pointing observations with the EVLA and mosaicking observations with ALMA. Error analysis and corresponding impact on computing load for wide-band and mosaic imaging is also discussed. View a ps or pdf version of EVLA Memo #100 at: http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/evla/memolist.shtml --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALMA presentations at the January Zmachine meeting are available on line through links at www.zmachines.net ******************************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 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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