BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO 2 June 2008 - 16 June 2008 ******************************** THIS FORTNIGHT************************* Several acceptance reviews will occur at the Operations Support Facility (OSF) in Chile. Preparations are being made for an ALMA Board face-to-face meeting in conjunction with the SPIE meeting in Marseille next fortnight. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: http://www.alma.cl Sky: Comet C/2007 W1 (Boattini) is visible in the evening sky from the Southern Hemisphere. South of Sirius, the comet passes south of the Sun in mid-June, when it should reach 5th magnitude as it passes about a quarter AU from Earth and 0.85 AU from the Sun. The Atacama Compact Array is ideal for observing comets, as it is always in a compact configuration well-suited for diffuse objects. See: http://www.aerith.net/comet/catalog/2007W1/2007W1.html and watch for it to reappear to the eye in early July. Mars and Saturn are evening objects, Mars passing close to Saturn early in the month. Jupiter remains bright in Sagittarius; Venus is in Aries. On 4 July, Earth will be at its furthest from the Sun in the decade, owing to the near-coincidence of aphelion with New Moon (3 July). SCO (Santiago Central Office) : A team chaired by W. Wild visited the NA and EU Front End Integration Centers, in part to aid in development of a commissioning plan for these centers. AOS (Array Ops Site, 16570ft altitude): Road work, trenching, power and fiber optic connections for Pad 93, adjacent to the Technical Building, are under way, to be completed by August for testing of the first antenna at the AOS. Work continues on grading of the area for the central cluster, and is 73% complete; full completion is expected in mid-June. OSF (Ops Support Facility, 9600ft altitude): FE SN01 was used by the AIV team along with the BE first antenna article, the 2-antenna correlator, and system software to produce a spectral density plot over a 2 GHz band for the first end-to-end test of these combined units, which was accomplished 23 May at 6:23 pm. A second holography tower, to be used for antenna evaluation from the OSF, is under construction, with completion expected in August. Panel installation was completed on VertexRSI antenna No. 4. Construction on VxRSI Antenna No 5. is in progress in the now-full Site Erection Facility (SEF) building. A design verification meeting will be held for Melco antenna No 1. The first all-sky optical pointing run was conducted with the 2nd ACA 12-m antenna. An acceptance review will occur for the Antenna Transporters, for which an early task will be the removal of VxRSI Antenna No 2 from the SEF to an antenna pad next to Antenna No 1 (on which repairs will be done this fortnight), just outside the building, for continued tests expected to lead to acceptance in a few months. For this task, antenna brackets, an interface between antenna and transporter, are needed. The first few antenna transport brackets should achieve acceptance this fortnight. AOC: Preparations for the mid-July software review continue. A master Laser and Laser Synthesizer Review (Critical Design Review) will be held in Quebec City the week of 16 June. ATF: A user test was completed 22-26 May. A focus of tests in the coming weeks will be on total power pointing, needed for antenna evaluation in Chile. Pending further developments, the ATF will remain in operation through 1 September. NTC (NRAO Technology Center): With the first Front End successfully tested in Chile, planning is under way to mount it on an antenna when one becomes available. The second Front End, SN02 is assembled, mounted in the test chamber at the NA FEIC, and is being used for beam pattern measurements. An Expert Team will meet 7-9 June at the NA Front End Integration Center (FEIC) to help establish technical readiness of the FEICs and to verify the Front End assembly design concept. Subsequent meetings in June will occur at Rutherford Appleton Labs in the UK. The LORTM units #1 and #2 are now expected to be shipped by Teraxion on June 6. The second quadrant of the correlator is completely assembled and ready for full circuit card population. Plans are advanced for moving the first quadrant of the correlator to Chile. All Tunable Filter Board cards for the third quadrant have been shipped to the NTC. HIA: The Provisional Acceptance In-house (PAI) review for 3mm cartridges (B3) SN07 and SN08 is scheduled for June 6. NAASC: A calendar of NAASC events may be found at: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/naasc/calendar/calendar.php *************************************************************************** DAILY CALENDAR (Times EDT/EST ) see https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar ****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS ************************* June 2-5 AAS Meeting St. Louis June 16-18 Master Laser, Laser Synthesizer CDR Quebec City June 16-17 ALMA 2008 Worksop Madrid June 19 63rd OSU Symposium Molecular Spectroscopy Ohio June 23-27 Band 9 Preproduction Review June 23-27 Band 9 Manufacturing Readiness Review July 2 1430UT ASAC Telecon Telecon July 16-18 Software Review No 6. Aug 11-12 EPO face-to-face Ch'ville Sep 2 1430UT ASAC Telecon Telecon Sep 9-11 ACA 7m antenna PPDR Osaka Sep 28-29 ASAC face-to-face Charlottesville Dec 9-11 ALMA Annual External Incremental Review OSF ******************************* TECHNICAL NEWS ************************* *****************************ALSO OF INTEREST*************************** Registration is now open for "Transformational Science with ALMA: The Birth and Feedback of Massive Stars, Within and Beyond the Galaxy" A workshop to be held at the North American ALMA Science Center National Radio Astronomy Observatory Charlottesville, Virginia September 25-27 2008 Please see: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/php/meetings/massive08/ Abstract submission is now closed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A small workshop will be held at IRAM, Grenoble September 8 2008 on the topic of simulations of ALMA imaging. The goals are 1) To bring together the radio astronomy community with expertise in simulations of ALMA data to share experiences, ideas and code 2) To illustrate the power of ALMA in a small number of scientific fields through the presentation of simulations of ALMA science targets 3) To assess how simulations can be used to optimise the performance of ALMA once it is operational, by, for example, suggesting the optimal calibration strategies and observing modes The workshop web-page is: http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~bn204/almasim08/ *************************************************************************** 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