ALMA

• Report of the Joint Antenna Technical Group
• Construction progress at the Operations Support Facility
• The European ALMA Regional Center
• ALMA People
• Upcoming events

The tests of the prototype antennas in Socorro NM, USA are now finished, and the report of the Joint Technical Evaluation Group sent to the executives, ESO and AUI/NRAO. ESO has sent a report on the antennas to the ESO Finance Committee for considering the purchase. The Finance Committee meets on May 10 and 11. After Finance Committee, any purchase request must be sent to ESO Council for approval. The Council meets on June 6 and 7.

Left: Excavations for the Operations Support Facility buildings have now started. The OSF, at an altitude of 2900m will be where most ALMA staff will be present during normal ALMA operations. It will also house laboratories, an assembly hall, and several antenna pads for testing. The building will be on the slope facing the Salar de Atacama, and consist of two levels, as can be seen in the picture and cross section diagram. Right: Excavation material from the upper level is crushed and used for filling the lower level.

The construction of the first 28km of road, from Chilean highway 23 to the OSF and continuing on to the Array Operations Site at 5000m is now finished. Between the OSF and the high site, the road is 12m wide. The picture gives a full view of the road from km 27.1 all the way down to the Chilean highway 23 next to the Salar de Atacama.

The ALMA telescopes will be at the Llano de Chajnantor at 5000m. The picture is centred on the ESO/NRAO containers, which will become the central part of the array.

The development of the European ALMA Regional Center (ARC) is continuing. A position of ARC manager is currently offered on the ESO web pages (deadline for applications is 15 May 2005). The ARC manager shall be responsible for developing and managing all ARC scientific support activities located in Garching including: user support, data analysis support, and archive operations.

Gianni Raffi obtained his degree in Electronic Engineering at the University of Padova, Italy. He then worked in the computer industry in Milan for 4 years. Wanting to change, he moved to the Culham Laboratory, United Kingdom, where he worked on fusion experiment control aspects for 2.5 years and continued the same activity for another year in Padova. Moving from fusion to high energy physics, Gianni joined then CERN (DD Division) in Geneva as an associate and worked there on control and data acquisition for 2 years. Gianni joined ESO in 1980, when ESO moved from Geneva to Garching. At ESO Gianni was for several years in charge of the Software Department (TEC Division), which had responsibility for most of the control software projects, from remote control of the La Silla telescopes to the NTT and VLT control software for both telescopes and instruments. He spent a total of about one year in Chile for the commissioning of various software projects at the La Silla and Paranal Observatories. Gianni is currently the ALMA European Computing Manager and deputy of the ALMA Computing IPT. The European Computing group is very distributed in Europe, with a core group of 15 software developers (mostly full-time) at ESO, who are contributed by various Divisions (ALMA, TEC, DMD). Other ALMA software developers are in European Institutes outside ESO (UKATC - Edinburgh, JBO/University of Manchester, IRAM - Grenoble, LERMA/Observatoire de Paris, MPIfR - Bonn, CSIC/IEM - Madrid, AOT Trieste). These contribute about 11 full-time staff equivalent effort to ALMA Computing.

Joseph Schwarz is deputy to Gianni Raffi in the ALMA Computing IPT. He leads the high-level analysis and design activity, and is generally responsible for coordinating the design of the software system architecture. He also participates in ALMA software development as a member of the Observation Preparation subsystem team. Joe got his PhD in Astronomy at Harvard in 1972, elaborating on time-dependent models of and cloud formation in the interstellar medium . As a postdoc at Princeton University Observatory, he worked on models of explosive events in the early universe. Next, he moved to the High Energy Astrophysics Division at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where he was responsible for the selection and procurement of computer hardware and the coordination of software development. He supported the hardware/software systems for the analysis, archiving, and distribution of astronomical data from the HEAO-1, Einstein, and ROSAT X-ray observatories. In 1990, he moved to Milan, Italy to work as a consultant first for Apple Computer, and from 1993-95 for ESO, where he worked on using the NTT as a testbed for future VLT operations. In 1995, Joe became an ESO staff member, directing the maintenance and upgrading of ESO's finance, purchasing and personnel computer software and hardware. He also oversaw the the introduction of IT outsourcing into ESO and managed the technical relationship between the outsourcing vendor and ESO s users. Joe has been in the ALMA division since 2000.

Luitjens Popken, of German nationality, has since 1987 been a staff member of the European Space Agency (ESA) in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. From 1994 to 2002 he was the Principal Electrical Systems Engineering Manager for the ESA satellite INTEGRAL (International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory), which is operational since January 2003. Luitjens earned his degrees in telecommunications in the early 1980's. Since then his special interests are in the fields of microwave and synchronization systems. In addition to his responsibility for the INTEGRAL electrical systems, he was in 2000 called to join the ESA task force for the recovery of the Huygens space probe mission from a serious implementation flaw discovered in the telecommunications subsystem after the mission launch. Luitjens was in charge of modeling the faulty onboard receiver. After extensive verifications by in-orbit tests the complicated model became crucial for the redesign of the relay link geometry and eventually for the successful retrieval of the science data during the probe descent to the Saturn moon Titan in January 2005. After the completion of the Huygens mission (and the corresponding celebrations) Luitjens joined the ALMA systems engineering team at ESO in February 2005, following a secondment agreement between ESO and ESA. He will work towards the ALMA performance verification. This will at system level require the synthesis and coordination of the results achieved by the ALMA Front-End and Back-End development activities. Luitjens is looking forward to explore the synergy between the engineering frontiers of complex ground- and space based interferometry systems. In his new function he will enjoy fostering the mutual interests and on-going cooperation between the institutions of ESO and ESA.

Volker Heinz graduated from the Fachhochschule Koblenz in 1993 as mechanical engineer. He then worked as commissioning engineer at Dorst, a company making mechanical and hydraulic presses for the powder metal industry. From 1998 to 2001 he worked at ABB Turbinen Nuernberg as service/commissioning engineer in the field of commissioning, troubleshooting and operator training for industrial steam turbines worldwide. In October 2001 he joined ESO as mechanical engineer on Cerro Paranal, working as the mechanical team leader since April 2002. The mechanical team supports and carries out the integration of new systems like the Auxiliary Telescope System. The group is also involved in high level maintenance, such as the 8m mirror handling for the re-coating. Since April 2005 Volker is part of the ALMA system engineering and integration IPT, as a preparation to take over site integration tasks in Chile.

European Radio Interferometry School
5-9 September, 2005, Manchester, United Kingdom
Deadline for registration is 1 July 2005

IRAM Summer School 2005: mm Observing Techniques and Applications
September 30 - October 7, 2005, Pradollano (Sierra Nevada), Spain
Deadline for registration is 30 July 2005

Galactic and Extragalactic ISM Modeling in an ALMA Perspective
October 13 -15, 2005, Onsala Observatory, Sweden
Contact person: Susanne Aalto

Planning has been started for a 'Global ALMA Meeting' to be held in Madrid in October or November 2006. This will be the first world-wide ALMA science meeting since the Washington DC meeting in 1999. The local organization of the meeting will be headed by R. Bachiller (OAN), while the scientific organization will be led by the Alma Science Advisory Committee.