ALMA Update

1  Recent news

On the international front, the Request for Proposals to build the 64 ALMA antennas has now been sent out. This is a very important milestone for the ALMA project, as the antennas are the single most expensive item in the ALMA budget. In addition, Japanese funding for ALMA has recently been approved and the Board is very busy negotiating the terms of Japan's participation in ALMA. The construction camp in Chile and the design for the Operations Support Facility are coming along. Evaluation of the two prototype antennas is continuing at the VLA site. The ALMA Board and the Joint ALMA Office are continuing their search to fill the positions of Project Scientist and Project Manager, while a candidate has been chosen for the position of Project Engineer. In North America, there will be an ALMA Science Workshop held at the University of Maryland May 14-15, 2004. This meeting is intended to showcase the scientific capabilities of ALMA, beginning with the ALMA Early Science phase in 2008 and continuing through full operations in 2012. The meeting will begin with review talks on the capabilities of ALMA and the four main science themes for ALMA. Participants will then break out into working groups to discuss each of the science themes in more detail as well as questions related to desired scientific capabilities in the Early Science phase and types of user support. There will be opportunities for meeting participants to present their current and future science as it relates to ALMA as either short oral or poster presentations. I urge any Canadian astronomers who are interested in ALMA to consider attending this meeting. More information, including the evolving program and registration information, is available at www.alma.nrao.edu In Canada, ALMA will be featured prominently at the CASCA meeting in Winnipeg June 12-16, 2004. There will be an invited talk on ALMA by Suzanne Aalto-Bergman from the Onsala Space Observatory on Tuesday morning, followed by an ALMA information session during the lunch break. This session will also be an opportunity to hear about the May meeting in Maryland for those of you who were unable to attend.

2  ALMA Science Advisory Committee

The ALMA Science Advisory Committee (ASAC) has been relatively quiet since my previous report. Our next fact-to-face meeting will be held May 10-11, 2004 in Cambridge, UK. Work is beginning to get underway in preparation for that meeting, which will focus on ALMA Operations, Calibration, and Early Science.

3  ALMA Developments in Canada

3.1  Band 3 Receiver Development

The ALMA Band 3 instrumentation project remains on schedule at HIA. The noise temperature of the 2SB mixer design is close to achieving the specification of 34 K set by the ALMA project. At this noise temperature, the sky and optics begin to dominate the measurement noise. The HIA-designed IF amplifiers are also meeting specifications. Production of 70 high quality receivers, at one per month, remains the biggest challenge and excellent progress has been achieved on the design and specifications of the automated test set hardware and software. In February, a milestone was reached when the test cryostat, capable of holding up to four double-sideband (DSB) mixer assemblies at once, was successfully cooled to 3.5 K. The Preliminary Design Review of the Band 3 instrument will be held at HIA on 29-30 March, 2004. For more information please contact the Band 3 Project Scientist, Doug Johnstone (doug.johnstone@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca).

3.2  Software

Hiring into two software positions at the University of Calgary has now been completed. Gary Li will work with the ALMA Offline Subsystem and David Fugate will work with the ALMA Common Software Subsystem. David comes to the University of Calgary from NRAO in Socorro where he did similar work. Gary Li began his tenure by visiting the AIPS++ group in Socorro for two weeks. Raymond Rusk will also be seconded from DRAO to the University of Calgary so that CFI funding covers all ALMA software development in Canada except for work done within the CADC on the Science Archive. Raymond Rusk is exploring the possibilities for collaboration with Dr Robert Walker, the director of the Software Engineering Program at the University of Calgary. The aim of the proposed collaboration is to evaluate various commercial and research tools by using them to analyze the AIPS++ system. The AIPS++ system is a large package with about 2 million lines of source code in C++ and Glish/Tk. Even though it is under active development it shares many characteristics with other large legacy systems and should be an excellent real world test case for modern software engineering tools and methods that are applicable to reverse engineering, round-trip engineering and refactoring of code. Chris Wilson participated as a tester in the first user test of the Offline Data Reduction Package (based on AIPS++) which was finished in mid-February 2004. The Offline Test was successful and her experience using AIPS++ provided a good refresher in advance of the first user tests for the Pipeline Subsystem, which she will be carrying out in April-May 2004. She is also involved in the effort of the Science Softare Requirements Committee to develop test plans and break down the list of Software Requirements into the finer level of detail required to monitor progress during the ALMA Construction phase.

3.3  Personnel Changes

As mentioned in the previous ALMA update article, in January, 2004, Lewis Knee took over the reins at the Millimetre Astronomy Group at HIA in Victoria, and is the new ALMA Canadian Project Manager. A graduate of Onsala Space Observatory, Chalmers University of Technology, Lewis has a strong background in single-dish (sub)millimetre astronomy and in southern hemisphere Galactic star formation from his four years as an ESO Fellow at SEST in Chile. Following his return to Canada, he spent seven years earning his "black belt" in aperture synthesis at DRAO and broadened his research interests in ISM studies. In addition to his responsibilities to monitor, report, and advise on Canadian construction phase ALMA activities to HIA management and to the wider Canadian community, a major focus of Lewis' activities will be to help define Canada's scientific and technical involvement in the operations phase of ALMA, and to help ready the Canadian community for early science operations, scheduled to begin in 2007-08. Henry Matthews, who upon his return from his posting at the JCMT in Hawaii went to DRAO, has been asked by the ALMA Antenna Evaluation Group to provide assistance with radiometric evaluation of the ALMA prototype antennas in Socorro. The information gathered from the evaluation will be used as input to the production antenna contract decision process. Henry's expertise with radiometric measurements will be an integral part of the radiometric testing plan, and will involve using the radiometer installed on both antennas to study pointing, focus, beam characteristics, and radiometric efficiency. Chris Wilson wilson@physics.mcmaster.ca Canadian ALMA Project Scientist (with contributions from Doug Johnstone, Lewis Knee, and Raymond Rusk)

File translated from TEX by TTH, version 3.40.
On 16 Mar 2004, 19:22.