[mmaimcal] FYI: 24 Sept 2007 BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO
Al Wootten
awootten at nrao.edu
Tue Oct 23 15:46:47 EDT 2007
Folks,
Still trying to catch up; here is some more hoary old news. Comments,
contributions or calisthentics?
Clear skies,
Al
BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO
24 Sept 2007 - 8 October 2007
******************************** THIS FORTNIGHT*************************
Jeff Kern reports from the ATF that ALMA achieved another milestone on
the path to dynamic fringeson 2 Oct. Stable fringes were achieved
on Mercury using a polynomial for the geometric delay provided by Emerson.
Fringes were observed for approximately 2 hours with no human interaction.
Afterwards, fringes were observed on 3C279. Although the weather was
cloudy, the system included many key ALMA devices. Delays were set in
the correlator and Digitizer Clock, and fringe tracking done in the
First Local Oscillator Offset Generator.
Congratulations to everyone who has worked hard to get ALMA to this point.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The pedestal for Vertex Antenna #2 is erect in the Site Erection Facility.
The operation went smoothly and took about an hour 27 Sept. A photo of
this as well as of the assembled Vertex Antenna #1 is available at
http://www.nrao.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Past issues of this Calendar may be viewed at
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html
See also the JAO ALMA Calendar overview at:
http://www.alma.cl/alma_project
***************************************************************************
General Happenings
Photos of activity may be found at:
http://www.alma.nrao.edu/almanews/almagallery/index.html
Sky: Mars continues to beckon the attention of the ALMA prototype
antennas high in the morning sky, Jupiter dominates the same evening
sky. The Moon, Venus and Regulus convene in the early morning sky at the
end of the biweek. Venus, Saturn and Regulus party together on
9 October. C/2007 F1 (LONEOS) is approaching the Sun, at magnitude 7.2 now
it expected to reach naked eye visibility by Halloween (0.4AU from the
Sun). In the Southern Hemisphere, it will appear in the evening sky at
4-5 mag in early November.
SCO (Santiago Central Office): Preparations are being made for the ALMA
Board meeting in Chile at the end of October, followed by the AMAC
review.
TUC: ALMA and EVLA brochures were provided for the meeting 'Astrophysics
in the Next Decade: JWST and Concurrent Facilities' attended by many ALMA
personnel. Fomalont and Wootten met with Holdaway and Emerson in the
NRAO offices.
AOS (Array Ops Site, 16570ft altitude): Weather began the period with
several millimeters of precipitable water at the APEX telescope but for
the last half of the fortnight measurements were generally around 0.5mm
of precipitable water.
OSF (Ops Support Facility, 9600ft altitude): There are 490 people
working at the ALMA site. Final contractor testing of the first
VertexRSI and Melco antennas is beginning. The second VertexRSI antenna
mount arrived in Chile and is being erected in the site erection
facility. An OSF weather station was installed, with sensors on the
holography tower now operational.
ATF: Emerson and Mangum produced a good radiometric pointing model for
the ATF, enabling attainment of static fringes on Mercury. Napier
evaluated system efficiencies using static fringes on Mercury and
tipping curves.
AOC: A replacement CFRP section for the VertexRSI quadrupod leg arrived;
installation is expected to commence in about four weeks. Juan Salazar
was hired as LO Antenna Technician. Welcome, Juan!
NTC (NRAO Technology Center and ALMA Front End Integration Center):
Measurements of the FE assembly test station mechanical stability were
made. The Computing IPT successfully communicated with a completed FE
assembly. In Grenoble, Band 7 (0.87mm) Cartridge #8 (last
pre-production unit !!!) Provisional Acceptance In-house (PAI) was
successfully completed on 17th September. The PAI for all
pre-production Band 3 (3mm) warm optics, 8 sets, was also completed.
Stephen Nuttall has been hired as a Photonics technician starting
2007-09-24. Welcome Stephen!
Assembly for the 2nd Quadrant os the ALMA Correlator is nearly
complete.
NAASC:
A calendar of NAASC events may be found at:
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/naasc/calendar/calendar.php
***************************************************************************
DAILY CALENDAR (Times EDT/EST ) see
https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar
Sun 23 Sep -
Mon 24 Sep -
4:00PM: ATF telecon
Tue 25 Sep -
Wed 26 Sep - Harvest Moon
Thu 27 Sep -
Fri 28 Sep -
Sat 29 Sep -
Sun 30 Sep -
Mon 1 Oct -
4:00PM: ATF telecon
Tue 2 Oct
10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon
Wed 3 Oct -
1:00pm: NAASC telecon
Thu 4 Oct -
Fri 5 Oct -
Sat 6 Oct -
Sun 7 Oct -
Mon 8 Oct - Columbus Day Holiday (most of US)
4:00PM: ATF telecon
****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS *************************
Sep 26 B3 CDR Victoria
Oct 1-2 B6 CDR Cville
Oct 29-31 ALMA Board Meeting Santiago&San Pedro
Nov 1-2 AMAC Review Santiago
Nov 13-15 Production Review Cville-ER
******************************* TECHNICAL NEWS *************************
The On The Fly imaging technique has been described in a paper of the
same name by J. G. Mangum, D. T. Emerson and E. W. Greisen in the
November issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol 474, p. 679-687. All
12m ALMA antennas will be capable of imaging using this technique.
*****************************ALSO OF INTEREST***************************
Proposals for observing time on the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory on
Mauna Kea for the semester 1st February-31st July 2008 should be sent by
31st October 2007 to T. G. Phillips, Caltech 320-47, Pasadena, CA 91125.
For further information please refer to the CSO web site at
http://www.submm.caltech.edu/cso.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The deadline for proposals to use NRAO telescopes (GBT, VLA, VLBA) is
1700 EDT Friday, 1 October 2007.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jobs for scientists interested in working on the commissioning of ALMA
are available at both ESO and NRAO.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory invites applications for an
ALMA Commissioning Scientist position. This position is assigned to the
ALMA project with operational duties in Chile. The role of the ALMA
Commissioning Scientist will be to assist the Project Scientist and the
Deputy Project Scientist in planning and executing the scientific
commissioning of ALMA.
We invite applications for one or more Assistant Scientist positions in
the NAASC. The primary responsibility of the successful candidates
initially is to participate in ALMA Commissioning and Science
Verification (CSV). Women and minority candidates are encouraged to apply.
http://www.nrao.edu/administration/personnel_office/careers.shtml
For ESO jobs please see:
https://jobs.eso.org/ESOCP370/default.asp?PageNo=DEFAULT
For ALMA jobs please see:
http://www.alma.cl/jobops/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Applications are invited for Submillimeter Array (SMA) Postdoctoral
Fellowships starting in fall 2008. These positions are aimed chiefly at
research in submillimeter astronomy, and the successful candidates are
expected to propose and participate in science observations with the SMA.
See http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/opportunities/fellowships/sma/
Please direct questions to smapostdoc at cfa.harvard.edu.
Online applications are due December 15, 2007.
***************************************************************************
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 available at
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html
More information about the mmaimcal
mailing list