[mmaimcal] BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO

[Al Wootten]

                        BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO
                           October 25, 2004 -- November 8, 2004


******************************** LAST FORTNIGHT*********************************
Apologies for delayed delivery of this.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
More than 230 potential ALMA and Herschel users gathered in Paris for the
Dusty and Molecular Universe conference, which focussed on the science the
community expects to reap from ALMA and Herschel.  Paul van den Bout spoke on
the origins of ALMA, and Carlos de Breuck and John Richer presented the top
level ALMA science requiremets from the newly approved Project Plan v2.  Project
Scientists Wilson and Wootten attended as members of the SOC.  The conference
was acclaimed as a success; presentations may be viewed online at:
http://aramis.obspm.fr/DUSTY04/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 1 November a small celebration will be held by members of the JAO, the ALMA
Board, and others to inaugurate the interim ALMA facilities in Santiago.
Afterward, the JAO will lead the Board north for two days of meetins at the
ALMA Camp on the site of the Operations Support Facility.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Felix Mirabel will gradually assume ESO duties formerly performed by Daniel
Hofstadt and Danielle Alloin in Chile.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Past issues of this Calendar may be viewed at 
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html
*******************************************************************************

General Happenings
Santiago: Opening of Interim ALMA Headquarters

SPdA: ALMA Board meets at ALMA Camp at site of future OSF

Please see the October NRAO Newsletter for a report.
            
DAILY CALENDAR (Times EDT )
Mon 25 October
Tue 26 Registration for Dusty04
Wed 27 DUSTY04, Paris
Thu 28 DUSTY04, Paris
Fri 29 DUSTY04, Paris concludes
 10:30 AM-11:30 AM: CCB Meeting
Sat 30 
Sun 31 Halloween 
Mon  1 November Celebration to open the Interim Santiago ALMA Headquarters
Tue  2 ALMA Board meets, ALMA Camp at OSF site
Wed  3 ALMA Board meets, ALMA Camp at OSF site
Thu  4
8:30 AM-10:00 AM: JAO Teleconference
Fri  5  
Sat  6  
Sun  7

****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS ******************************
ALMA Calendar  
    
    * 27-29 Oct -- Dusty and Molecular Universe Paris
    * 29 Oct -- ANASAC Telecon
    * 1 Nov -- ALMA JAO and Executives Face-to-face Meeting, Santiago
    * 2-3 Nov -- ALMA Board Face-to-face Meeting, OSF, near San Pedro de Atacama
    * 5 November -- ANASAC Telecon
    * 9 November -- ASAC Telecon
    * 16 November -- Science IPT Telecon
    * 2 December -- ALMA Board Telecon
    * 5-7 Jan 2005 -- UNSC URSI Boulder meeting Commission J
    * 6 Jan 2005 -- ANASAC Telecon
    * 11 Jan 2005 - ALMA Town Meeting, AAS San Diego
    * 27 Jan 2005 -- ALMA Board Telecon

******************************* TECHNICAL NEWS *******************************
EVLA Memo No. 84 Solving for the antenna based pointing errors
S. Bhatnagar, T.J. Cornwell and K. Golap  National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Abstract: The imaging dynamic range of an aperture synthesis telescope
for mosaicing and for fields with significant flux throughout the
antenna primary beams can be limited by the knowledge of the
individual primary beams projected on the sky.  For high dynamic range
imaging of such fields, one requires an accurate measurement of the
shape of the primary beams and the pointing offsets as a function of
time.  The effect of antenna pointing errors remain separable in the
visibility domain.  With at least two, well separated sources along
the RA and Dec axis each to constrain the solutions, it is possible to
solve for these errors in an antenna based fashion in the visibility
domain.

Here we analyze the effect of antenna based pointing errors on the
imaging dynamic range and fidelity and present an algorithm to solve
for these errors using a model for the sky brightness distribution.
For a typical L-band eVLA simulation with typical pointing errors for
the VLA antennas, the RMS noise can be reduced by a factor of ~10
using this algorithm.  The improvement in the image fidelity is even
larger.  The formulation given here can be further extended to include
other direction dependent effects - specially for application to
mosaicing observation.  Extension of this work for such, more
sophisticated solvers is in progress.

View a pdf version of EVLA Memo #84 at:
http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/evla/geninfo/memoseries/evlamemo84.pdf

*******************************ALSO OF INTEREST*******************************
 
*******************************************************************************     
Please send information for upcoming calendars by Friday evening of the
preceding biweekly period to Jennifer Neighbours or Al Wootten via e-mail 
(jneighbo at nrao.edu or awootten at nrao.edu).

The calendar will be issued between late Friday and sometime on Monday by e-mail
to all NRAO scientific staff members and anyone else interested. A specific
mailing list, alma-info, has been created for anyone wishing to receive it.  Past issues
are now available at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html