[alma-config] alma configuration simulations

[Min Yun]

Mark,

Your point is well taken.  There is no way the simulations we
propose to conduct in the coming months are any strong indications
of the true imaging performance of ALMA.  However, the impact of
pointing error on imaging ability is nearly independent of the
configuration style -- or certainly the interplay is non-trivial
to understand.  To the same context as all the other errors are
nearly independent of configuration design.  Given that we have
no perfect solution to the problem, we should try to do our best
to isolate the managible effects and try to test things within
those bounds.  In this sense, I see the planned simulations as
the tests for the competiting configuration designs to various
source parameters.  A secondary test, perhaps poorly controlled,
is to evaluate the truth in the doom-and-gloom scenarios of
"extraplolations and interpolations" in the imaging algorithms.

The mosaic imaging challenge should most certainly be addressed at
some point down the line, perhaps as part of the optimization for
the compact and other smaller configurations.  I don't doubt your
previous work on this matter, and I am convinced that we will
need a next major step in software to go beyond 1000:1 imaging,
somewhat analogous to what the advent of deconvolution algorithms
have done for synthesis imaging.  I hope you and others in the
aips++ group will be up to this challenge at some point.




					-- Min