ASAC Telecon 10 August 2004 Carilli, Schilke, Wootten, C. Wilson, Mundy, Laing, Turner, Kawabe, Richer, van Dishoeck, Testi, Emerson, Momose, Minutes to be produced. Calendar. Dates for 2005 are announced. Discussion of date for upcoming report. Written report expected by 15 November but the Board would be very happy if the report could be made available early. ASAC is expected to report at each Board face-to-face meeting. Following report, a face to face should be made about February. Kawabe: Finished discussions on wording of the agreement between Japan and ALMA. Expect this to be signed within one month. Laing: New project planner, front end production engineer, a few limited term secondment people. Action item--can ASAC see H2 Ops Plan. Ask about review documentation. Laing--talked to Murowinski about this re: computing CDR. Response to report: Who will aid the Science IPT on this? Carilli, Mundy, Richer Science IPT leads. Part of CSV will be to assemble a calibrator list, which we will need to enhance in some way, either with existing instrumentation, or with the prototype interferometer. CC: Bolometer would be very wide area, shallow. JT: ES may have to work with known targets. JR: An allsky survey may be obtained with SCUBA2 but this is some way off. Optimistically 2007. But this is not well supported by the community from a science point of view. CC: Some discussion in the US as to external funding. JR: There is a need for additional funds. Of course the JCMT is a northern telescope. A bolometer does not reveal source extent very well. PS: Blind survey around a source to seek the calibrator. This probably works as ALMA builds. JR: This isn't the best use of ALMA time. RL: At the lower freqs following up flat spectrum cm sources is quite feasible. Charges from the Board 1. Recommend clear, science-based criteria to be used by the Project in preparing tradeoff studies should budgetary constraints make it necessary to reduce planned activities in the baseline project following analysis of the responses to the antenna procurement process. General comments--do we plan to have smaller groups look at these. PS: Item 2 suggests such an approach. For the other charges this does not seem so appropriate but what is the sense of the committee? CC: These are substantive charges and we should get started. JR: Charge 1 is quite lively. EvD, JT a subgroup on this one would be difficult CW: But there should be someone to coordinate the discussions. JT: I'd like to have verification particularly on Charge 1 which seems to be carefully worded. EvD: MT suggested a more integrated construction/operations approach might help this somewhat. CW: Hesser asked me for comment on an earlier draft. The first one is not based on any knowledge that antenna costs are a problem; the ASAC should concentrate on areas which might be descoped with the least impact on science. EvD: Formulate with a mind toward specific science losses. CW: The best response would be quantitative. Sensitivity is easy but imaging quality is more difficult. EvD: We can enumerate--receiver bands, number of antennas, long baselines, software and so forth and try to describe what would be lost for each of these were it missing. RK: We really cannot change elements of the JP contributions. EvD: We just need to describe the losses if these things were to happen. LGM: Could delay some elements until later. EvD: We do this without regard to financial costs; we only evaluate science costs. LGM: They only seek criteria in the wording. CW: Considering scenarios helps to define those criteria. PS: Organization--assign some people as focus persons. This person digests comments and distributes. Or we can work in subgroups. JR: I agree with first approach. PS: Focus people will be the writers of this section. Charge 1: Focus person will be EvD for various receiver bands. Numbers of antennas: Jean Turner. This gets science arguments on the table. Charge 2: 2. Following thorough assessment of the pros and cons of policies in use at existing ground- and space-based facilities, including those currently operated by the ALMA Executives, ASAC is invited to consider policy recommendations on: a. how to facilitate joint projects between scientists of different partners, b. how to handle large proposals with significant scientific duplication, and c. whether provision needs to be made at this time for legacy projects and, if so, what mechanisms should be used for such projects. These complex, often-contentious issues should be addressed in the spirit of demonstrating how ASAC believes their recommendations, if adopted, would maximize ALMA’s scientific impact. Chris Wilson, Leonardo Testi, Diego Mardones volunteer. 3. Help the Science IPT to plan their study of the impact of calibration on a handful of the most challenging major science goals, in particular by providing ASAC’s views on the types of projects you feel are the most challenging from a calibration point of view. Review and comment on the Science IPT’s report when finished. Carilli volunteers. Cox might be interested. 4. Consider in more detail how the choice of objects for demonstration science with ALMA might be made and in particular how to facilitate involvement by the broader community in that process. Schilke agrees, Myers will help too. 5. Consider the project’s plans and progress towards a Science Verification Plan. Laing: I'm trying to write this. Mundy and Richer. Some summary by next telecon please; a progress report but not anything final. The 94 GHz downward looking radar was discussed by Emerson. The band 94-94.1 was allocated in 1997 to this, shared by radio astronomy. There is a requirement for cooperation with radio astronomy. In April 2005 the first of these will be launched. Two of the five planned satellites are in orbit. One of the five is active, the others are passive. 4 x 10^9 watts eirp from 700 km. An antenna could see 60 mW of power, twice what is needed to destroy the junctions in worst case-directly peering at each other. Other couplings are considered. We need to keep ten degrees from the satellite to be able to observe in B3 even away from the satellite frequency. Looking up the orbital elements of existing satellite,then consider what this means for the array. There would be a significant risk for the footprint to pass over the outer antennas. ALMA should avoid pointing within a degree of the zenith unless shuttered. There will be interference everywhere in B3 when antenna and satellite are within ten degrees of each other. This only occurs for short periods of time. Harmonics will be present but at a low level. Theoretical lifetime of several months, planned for several year operation if successful. A EU version of this planned for 2012. EvD: Full house 110 for the Sept meeting. CC: Number one issue is funding ALMA observing time for US scientists. Is 9 September a problem--apparently not.