[mmaimcal]Re: [Almasci] Telecon today

[Mark Holdaway]

I think that these are reasonable boundary conditions (though a factor
of 20 between long and short baselines for 6 antennas seems to be 
stretching it -- the VLA, with 27 antennas, has a ratio of 40), but 
I think the defining concepts for this task may be:
 
(1) that we usually want to use multiple configurations to get good (u,v) 
coverage (this is ALMA, not OVRO).

(2) that we want these configurations to be "expandable" in that
we will be adding antennas every month or so.  I know this was not
part of the current objective, but that is really the ultimate task.
Initially (ie, when there are 6 antennas), we may move all or almost
all between each configuration -- but at some point, more and more
antennas will NOT be moved as we change configurations.

   -Mark

> 
> The best way to start the ball rolling on this I belive is if I  produce a
> set of configurations using 6 antennas and the inner 172 pads, with say
> a factor of two in resolution between each configuration. This will be
> a useful resource to have even if in the end we only use a few of them.
> The early science DRSP can proceed in parallel deciding what resolutions
> are most favoured. The alternative of waiting for a final consensus on
> exactly which resolutions are wanted might delay the process.
> 
> I think any useful intermediate 6 antenna onfiguration needs ratios of
> shortest to longest  baseline in the range 10-20. Assuming long tracks
> are  going to be more common in the early scince phase, arrangements
> which are close to EW linear or  T shaped (like existing
> mm-interferometers) might be preferable, but we are of course limited
> by the pad distribution designed for  a 2D array of 64 antennas.
> 
>   John
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Almasci mailing list
> Almasci at listmgr.cv.nrao.edu
> http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/almasci
>