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A Town Meeting has been scheduled at
207th AAS Meeting in
Washington, D.C..
The purpose of this Town Meeting is to inform the membership of the
status of the ALMA Project. By the time of the AAS meeting in
Washington, the ALMA Prototype Interferometer at the VLA site will
have produced its first fringes, the production antenna contract will
have been let, and construction in Chile will have advanced
substantially. Further, the North American ALMA Science Center (NAASC)
will have begun initial operations in preparation for ALMA Early
Science. At this Town Meeting, the progress of ALMA
construction and plans for the NAASC and Early Science will be
presented, with time allocated for answering questions from the
audience. The Town Meeting will be held on Monday, January 9th from
12:30-1:30pm in the Cotillion Ballroom.
October 05, 2005
On Wednesday, October 05,2005, the Contractor's Camp kitchen and dining
room started operating. This facility is part of the Contractor's Camp
interior finishes contract. It has a capacity of 90 seated persons, and
cooking capacity of over 500 people.(Pictures are available here.)
September 15, 2005: ALMA Project Status
The presentation by the EU ALMA Project Manager Hans Rykaczewski to
the European ALMA Board is available in PDF format.
September 1, 2005:
Upcoming NAASC ALMA workshop...
From Z-Machines to ALMA: (Sub)millimeter Spectroscopy of Galaxies
On January 13-14, 2006, the North
American ALMA Science Center at
NRAO will sponsor a workshop in
Charlottesville, VA, on (sub)millimeter
spectroscopy of high-redshift galaxies. In the last decade, deep
imaging from infrared through radio wavelengths has revealed important
populations of distant, dusty galaxies with high rates of star
formation and/or accretion. Multiple efforts are now underway to
build dedicated, wide-bandwidth instruments ("Z-Machines") that
can directly determine molecular emission-line redshifts for sources
too obscured to be easily studied at short wavelengths. With ALMA
now under construction as well, it is timely to convene a workshop
whose goals are:
- familiarizing the community with the new generation of
wide-bandwidth (sub)millimeter spectrometers,
- highlighting the key scientific questions about dusty
high-redshift galaxies that they will be able to address in the
near term, and
- helping the community consider how their observing programs
can optimize exploitation of ALMA's unique capabilities on longer
timescales.
The first announcement, a list
of confirmed speakers, and web forms for preregistration and abstract
submission are available at
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/naasc/zmachines/.
Students are especially encouraged to attend.
August 1, 2005: Contract signed for AOS Technical Building
On 2 August, the contracts for the foundation and shell packages for the
ALMA Array Operations Site (AOS) technical building, an NRAO task, were
signed at the NRAO/AUI offices in Santiago with Chilean company CON PAX.
Mobilization is underway and construction is scheduled to start on 20
September 2005. The foundations are scheduled to be completed on 20
December 2005, and the shell structure is scheduled to be finished on 20
March 2006. This work will mark the beginning of construction for ALMA
on the high-elevation site.
Above: An artist's conception of the appearance of the
Technical Building to be constructed at the ALMA Array Operations Site
(AOS) at 5000m on the Chajnantor plateau.
(Left): The contract for the foundation and
shell of the building was signed 1 August 2005 at the AUI offices
in Santiago. Eduardo Hardy (on the right) represented AUI. On the
left is Gerardo Palma, Managing Director of CON PAX.
(Right): The contract for the foundation and shell of the building
was signed 1 August 2005 at the AUI offices in Santiago. Mauricio Pilleux
(left) and Eduardo Hardy (right) represented AUI. In the center is
Gerardo Palma, Managing Director of CON PAX.
July 11, 2005:
Announcement of Contract for ALMA Antennas
The National Science Foundation (NSF) and Associated Universities,
Incorporated (AUI), which operates the National Radio Astronomy
Observatory for the National Science Foundation, are pleased to
announce that on July 11, 2005 AUI signed a contract with Vertex
Communications Corporation to purchase up to 32 antennas for the
Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA).
(AUI Press Release
)
(General Dynamics Press Release
)
May 19, 2005: ALMA Brochure
A copy of the NRAO ALMA brochure to be distributed at the
206th
Meeting of the AAS (May 29-June 2 2005 in Minneapolis
MN) is available via the following link:
ALMA Brochure
(PDF, 1.1MB).
ALMA News 2004
ALMA News 2003
Last modified: Thu Sep 8 15:56:43 EDT 2005