[mmaimcal] FYI: 4 July BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO
Al Wootten
awootten at nrao.edu
Wed Jul 6 13:23:35 EDT 2005
BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO
July 4, 2005 -- July 17, 2005
******************************** THIS FORTNIGHT*********************************
ALMA Antenna Procurement
At the June 2005 meeting in den Haag, the Netherlands, the ALMA Board
adopted a resolution:
"The ALMA Board concurs with the ALMA Director's recommendation that the
North American Executive proceed with the issuance of a contract to
procure its share of the ALMA antennas. The Board recognizes that
authority to execute a contract is subject to NSF approval."
Late last week, the National Science Foundation gave the necessary
approval for the AUI/NRAO to proceed with negotiating a contract to
procure ALMA antennas. Negotiations have already been under way this
past week. The goal is to sign a contract before the middle of July.
This is tremendous news and will be remembered as a pivotal point in the
history of the ALMA project. Now the hard work can really begin!
Fred K. Y. Lo
Adrian Russell
July 1, 2005
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Effective today, July 5th, Stefan Michalski joined the NARO Program Office,
filling the role of Scheduler/Planner assigned to the ALMA Project.
Stefan's email address is smichalski at nrao.edu and he is using Richard
Simon's office on a temporary basis; the telephone number there is
434-296-0381.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The newly established Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and
Science has sent its FY 2006 funding bill, H.R. 2862, to the floor.
The Subcommittee recommends an increase in the National Science Foundation
budget of 1.1% (recall that the House bill provides an increase of 3.1%).
For Research and Related Activities The Committee recommends an appropriation of
$4,345,213,000. The recommendation is $124,657,000 above the fiscal year 2005
funding level and $11,713,000 above the budget request.
For details, please see http://tinyurl.com/942u7
Language of interest:
"The Committee is concerned that NSF continues to underfund
operations for radio astronomy. The operations, maintenance, and
development of new instrumentation at the Very Large Array, the Very
Long Baseline Array, and the Green Bank Telescope allows these
world-class facilities to provide valuable research into the origins
of the universe. The Committee recommends $51,400,000 for the
operations of the National Radio Astronomy Observatories."
"The Committee recommends $49,240,000 for the Atacama Large
Millimeter Array [ALMA] [same as House bill].
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Please welcome Hans Rykaczewski as the new European
ALMA Project Manager and Head of the ALMA Division.
Mr. Hans Rykaczewski comes to us from the Eidgenoessische Technische
Hochschule (ETH) Zurich where he was holding the position of resource
planning manager since 1989 and has recently worked on large experiments
for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
Mr. Rykaczewski takes up his position July 1st.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Past issues of this Calendar may be viewed at
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html
See also the ALMA Calendar overview at:
https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar
*******************************************************************************
General Happenings
Santiago: Cost Estimate sheets discussed IPT by IPT in rebaselining effort.
OSF: ALMA Camp completed to 30 beds; contractor camp construction begun.
First Aid Service commenced. Road construction above 28km to begin soon.
27 persons are working on the site.
AOS: In preparation for AOS technical building construction, new containers
have been delivered near the site characterization containers; site
characterization equipment was moved to new quarters.
Tucson: Development of Line Length corrector will continue in Tucson, but
move to Charlottesville by August.
Conway finalized the positions of the pads covering configurations out to
4km maximum baseline. As it stands this design has positions
for 149 pads of which 11 would only be built when the array reaches
60-64 antennas. A total of 19 moves of 4 antennas are needed for ALMA to grow
from the most compact array to the 4km array. Mark Holdaway
is converging on a design for the largest array, with an additional 35
pads populated with an additional 9 moves of 4 antennas.
AOC: A significant e2e test of the IF was accomplished June 18. Broadband
noise plus a CW signal were injected at the input to the BE IF processor,
downconverted using the 2nd LO, fed to both polarizations inputs of the
digitizer, formatted as three 10 Gb/s optical signals, multiplexed and
transmitted on a single 8km fiber, optically demuxed and detected, deformatted
as 64 125 Mb/s signals, passed to the prototype correlator, auto-correlated
and the spectrum presented via the correlator test GUI. This test used three
optical channels and all system components
between BE input and COMP software output display. A future step will be to
do this x4 and use all 12 optical channels.
Central LO delivered to Socorro from Tucson. Completion of test and
characterization, and future upgrades to the laser synthesizer modules,
will take place in Socorro.
Review of 2 GHz LO design planned for 28 July in Socorro. Japan sending
two representatives.
Review of cable wrap design proposal planned for 30 July 10 am MDT. (Socorro)
Correlator/Archive integration tests in Socorro;
Draft report on Offline (AIPS++) test circulated to testers for final comment.
NTC: Band 4 (2mm), 8 (.61 mm) PDRs reported successful (Mitaka).
FE Delta PDR this week (ESO). Band 6 (1.3mm) prototype shipped to IRAM
for testing.
Efforts to seet up Photonics Lab in Charlottesville have commenced.
*******************************************************************************
DAILY CALENDAR (Times EDT ) see
https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar
Mon 4 July
All Day: NRAO Holiday. This only became a national holiday in 1941.
Tue 5
10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon
4:00 PM-5:00PM: NAScienceIPT teleconference (open to all interested
parties) (434)296-7082
Agenda: https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/10May05A
Archive: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/
Wed 6
All Day: Front End Delta-PDR, Garching
2:00PM- 3:00PM: NAASC Meeting
Thu 7
All Day: Front End Delta-PDR, Garching
9:30 AM-11:00 AM: Management IPT Teleconference
Fri 8
Sat 9
Sun 10
Mon July 11 Stay tuned
Tue July 12
10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon
10:30 AM-11:30AM: ALMA ScienceIPT teleconference
Agenda: https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/10May05A
Archive: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/
Wed 13
11:00 AM-11:59 AM: ASAC Telecon
Thu 14
9:30 AM-11:00 AM: Management IPT Teleconference (with Japan)
Fri 15
Sat 16
Sun 17
****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS ******************************
ALMA Calendar--https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar
* Jul 3-4 -- Deep Impact probe impact of comet Temple 1.
* Jul 6-7 -- Front End IPT delta PDR, Garching
* Jul 11 -- TBD
* Jul 26-27 -- System Requirements Review, Charlottesville
* Sep 14 -- ESAC Meeting, Garching
* Sep 22-23 -- ACA System Review, Santiago
* Sep 24-30 -- JAO/IPT Meeting, OSF
* Sep 29-30 -- ESO Committee of Council
* Oct 1-2 -- ASAC Meeting, Santiago
* Oct 6 -- Rolling Stones come to Scott Stadium, Charlottesville
* Nov 8-9 -- ESO Finance Committee
* Dec 7-8 -- ESO Council Regular Meeting
******************************* TECHNICAL NEWS *******************************
******************************ALSO OF INTEREST*******************************
A call for new SMA proposals for the observing period NOV 1, 2005 thru APR
30, 2006 will be issued soon. The proposal deadline is expected to be
SEP 12, 2005. The announcement will invite proposals for "legacy
programs."
Workshop on Submillimeter Astronomy sponsored by SAO (the Power Point
presentation of most talks will be available on this site soon)
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/smast05
******************************************************************************
Please send information for upcoming calendars by Friday evening of the
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