Whitepaper update

[Peter Williams]

Dear all,

Well, a big thank you to the many folks who pitched in ideas and suggestions on the Google Doc! We've got some good ideas and, pleasingly, a wide range of science cases to bring up. My takeaway from the current version is:

• The highest priority is some kind of official support for observations with precise time constraints, and relatedly coordinated observations with other observatories.
• Next highest is ToO turnaround. Some science is OK with the nominal ~48 hour turnaround currently specified; others would benefit from faster. Also important is actually being able to look at your data quickly too, rather than having to wait for standard ALMA processing!
• Third highest is long staring observations.
• Simultaneous observations with the 7m and 12m arrays are of narrower interest but important to planetary science cases, and deserve mention.
• There's interest in being able to perform subarrayed observations like is possible with the VLA. I tend to think that we should leave this one out, though, to not get too fuzzy of a focus.
• Finally, Shami Chatterjee mentioned that Cornell is developing a fast-dump phased-array backend for ALMA that could potentially be used beyond its intended pulsar applications; we could express support for opening it up to PIs.

The next step is to write the more formal document. I'm working on stubbing out a LaTeX whitepaper hosted on the collaborative-editing website Overleaf. I'll send along a link later this evening once I've got a bit more together; then those of you who volunteered to write sections will be able to get to work. Overleaf isn't perfect but, based on my research, it seems like the best option out there. I think, but am not sure, that with the link you'll be able to edit the document without needing to create your own Overleaf account.

Authorship will be OPT-OUT for those of you on this email list. There will be a file called "roster.tex" in the Overleaf project with an alphabetical list of names and affiliations; just remove your name if that's what you want. Everyone else, once I email out the Overleaf link, please check that your name and affiliation appear as you want.

Cheers,

Peter

[Berger, Edo]

Dear Peter,

Thanks for spearheading this effort.  I hope that it will have a positive impact.

In terms of the specific priorities I'm surprised that rapid TOO, and the associated rapid access to data, have ended up as #2.  In my opinion, this is the most stringent set of requirements and everything else can flow from there once ALMA accepts that this is limiting several critical science applications.  I would suggest pushing this as the top priority.  In part because there is really no reason for ALMA not to conform to rapid observations and data access - the array is operated in queue mode, and the kind of data access that is required is at the level of detection / no detection and rough flux level.

Cheers,

Edo

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Edo Berger                                  

Professor of Astronomy                     
Harvard University                       
60 Garden St. MS-19                   
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA         
Ph. 617-495-7914 / F. 617-258-7467
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~eberger

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[Peter Williams]

My ranking was just based on the amount of discussion generated and the number of people that explicitly said "this is the my highest priority", but in both aspects the statistics are in the small-number regime, so I'm open to adjustments. Perhaps it would be better just to have "higher-priority" items and "lower-priority" items.

Peter