[asac]Charge 4

[Peter Schilke]

Dear ASAC members,

    we were all supposed to make a summary of the comments and ideas on 
the charges we received and distribute it before the telecon, and Phil 
and me were supposed to do Charge 4, demonstration science.  My summary 
is very easy, since I haven't received any input, but I'd like at least 
to summarize where we stand.  I'm leaving to Chile today and won't be 
able to process any more input before the telecon.

    The charge is about how to select sources for demonstration science 
and how to facilitate involvement of a broader community.

    In the May 2004 report, where we brought up the idea, we diveded 
demonstration science into two categories:

- Public demonstation images: to be selected by bodies such as science 
advisory committees, project scientists etc.  These should be pretty 
images which would look well in newspapers, but do not need to have any 
new scientific content, although it wouldn't hurt.

- Science demonstation projects: to demonstate the capabilities of ALMA 
to a broader community.  The idea then was that the data would become 
public immediately, and that they should be defined by an open call for 
ideas - not proposals.

We also thought it would be good to coordinate these with programs from 
other facilities.  While in principle the board liked this, they warned 
against putting too much emphasis on it - this is to demonstrate ALMA, 
after all.  Then, there still are the DRSP projects.

I still like the concepts we put into the May report.  It might be 
useful to accompany this "call for ideas" with workshops, before, to 
present the capabilities ALMA is going to have, and after, to help with 
data reduction.  These workshops should be aimed at a very broad 
audience.  I didn't attend the Spitzer workshops, but it would probably 
be worth looking into the experiences made there.

    Talk to you at the telecon,
            
             Peter

-- 
Dr. Peter Schilke               Max-Planck-Institut f"ur Radioastronomie
Auf dem H"ugel 69               D-53121 Bonn                     Germany
Tel.   49-228-525-392	 mobile: 49-160-7014309    FAX    49-228-525-435
mailto:schilke at mpifr-bonn.mpg.de

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