ALMA Science Advisory Committee

Draft Minutes for ASAC Telecon 7 August 2000

Conference Date: August 07-2000 (Monday)

Participants: Bachiller, Brown, Cox, Crutcher, Emerson, Evans, Fuller (guest), Guilloteau, Hasegawa, Ishiguro, Nakai, Rafal, Sakamoto, van Dishoeck, Walmsley, Welch, Wilson, Wootten, Yamamoto, Yun

The draft minutes for 10 July were accepted as proposed, with addition of some attendees.

1. News

R. Brown reported that a negotiating team would head to Chile in the Fall to negotiate with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The team consists of Cesarsky, Corbett, Freitag, Giacconi, vanden Bout and Dickman. The Joint Receiver Development Group will meet in Cambridge, England, on 7-8 September 2000.

2. 28 July Monbusho review

M. Ishiguro summarized the recent review. This provided a good start for LMSA/ALMA with support from outside the field of astronomy. A working group at Monbusho will discuss the review before the end of the year over about three meetings, with a report due in December. Funding might be possible in mid-2001 to mid-2002. An ALG meeting will occur on 11 September 2000 in Berkeley. The ASAC ALG liaison members asked whether they should plan on attending this session. A reply is pending.

3. Agenda for Berkeley ASAC

Details of the arrangements made by Jack are here.

HOTEL ACCOMMODATIONS:

A block booking reservation is being set up at The Hotel Durant

2600 Durant Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94704

510/845-8981 or 800 -2 -DURANT

FAX 510/486-8336

The Hotel Durant is 1 block South of the campus and is no more than a ten minute walk from Campbell Hall where the meeting will take place. A block booking rate of $108/night for a single room and $130/night for a double room will be given to meeting participants. PARTICIPANTS SHOULD MAKE HOTEL RESERVATIONS DIRECTLY WITH THE HOTEL. When reserving, please refer to the "ALMA Scientific Advisory Committee" block booking in order to receive the special rate.

All rooms must be guaranteed in advance, by a major credit card, advance deposit of first night's room and tax or by established credit account. RESERVATIONS MUST BE MADE BY AUGUST 8, 2000 IN ORDER TO RECEIVE THE DISCOUNTED RATE! After the cut-off date, the Hotel Durant will continue to accept reservations on a space available, rate available basis. Overnight parking for hotel guests is subject to a $7 per vehicle, per night charge.

The Hotel Durant is within easy walking distance of many restaurants and shops. You can also get a campus map from the main desk.

A draft agenda was discussed. Modified according to suggestions received, it can be found here. This agenda has been disseminated to Division Heads in the U. S.

Some issues discussed: Calibration: Memos by Mangum, Guilloteau and Plambeck are relevant. MMA Memo No. 318 by Mangum has appeared subsequent to the telecon.

WVR: It was mentioned that Hills plans two 183 GHz WVR prototypes utilizing different technologies. Richer should be able to update us on this. Woody continues efforts at OVRO to upgrade the existing WVR system there to achieve better sensitivity. He will present an update at the Berkeley meeting. Canada is trying to build a second device. The IR device is planned for placement on the JCMT/SMA eventually, with its output to be correlated with radiosonde. The Canadian 183 GHz WVR is essentially complete. The CSO radiometer will be moved to an SMA antenna for interferometry tests in the future.

Configurations: Yun will report on simulations. Guilloteau noted that inclusion of pointing errors overwhelms any difference in array style, in the first round of simulations. Inclusions of various types of errors is of fundamental importance.

Correlator: Wootten is trying to arrange a presentation. Webber will be at the JRDG meeting.

Passband calibration: Gurwell brought up this issue in an email. Emerson will give a report on the first order draft plan to use the photonic LO for this.

Site: Wootten will give an update on the site testing status, and on frequency protection and outreach activities.

Test Interferometer: Darrel will give a report on this.

4. Site News.

The Volcano Lascar erupted on 20 July 2000. A geological report may be found here in Spanish along with a poor translation.

Here is a photo of the Lascar eruption taken from San Pedro de Atacama about half an hour afer the initial eruption on 20 July. (I can probably generate more accurate timing if necessary) Combination of 2 Hasselblad 80mm frames taken by Bob Fosbury (attending a conference on Gravitational Lensing)...

Bryan Mason and Tim Pearson were at the CBI observatory (adjacent to the ALMA site on Chajnantor) and obtained pictures which are on Mason's CBI page . Marc Sarazin posted another nice image taken by GOES8 (IR channel), 35min after eruption: ESO image shows the ash fall from above.

There were no effects (ash fall, etc.) at Chajnantor.

5. Next Teleconference

The face-to-face meeting supersedes the September telecon.