Attachment 'summaryHERMES-Jul08.txt'

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Dear Colleagues,

   it is time to send an update on the status of the HERMES-M33 project
   to the entire team. Several of us, including the coordination group,
   met last week in Noordwijk to attend the Herschel Key project
   Coordination and Science Workshop at ESTEC:
   http://www.astro.cf.ac.uk/groups/egalactic/hkcsew/ (organized by
   J.Davies) and to take a look at Herschel itself. All presentations
   will be linked to this and the ESA/Herschel web pages.

   There will be several more workshops, organized by ESA, in the
   coming months. A first one in December 4-5 in Villafranca/Madrid. As
   participation is restricted to only 3 members per KP, and trying to
   strike a balance, I suggest that Manolis, Christian, and myself
   attend to get more hands on experience with data reduction of
   PACS/SPIRE photometry, PACS spectroscopy, and HIFI.  There will be
   similar workshops in the US. On August, 22nd, there is a small
   workshop on the open time key programs at the NASA Herschel Science
   Center. Several more workshops, also dedicated to the individual
   instruments, are planned for the next years.

   Concerning launch, the best guess of Goeran Pilbratt is sometime in
   February/March next year. It will take half a year before the key
   programs start to be observed. All key programs amount to almost
   2 years of observing time. Goeran promised to keep the KP holders
   informed and involved on the scheduling.

Paul, Jonathan, Gordon, Daniela, Steve, Markus, and me met briefly at
ESTEC to collect and discuss the present status of ground based
preparatory work, as summarized below.

   Daniela summarized the status of the 50m Large Millimter Telescocpe
   (LMT): the inner 30m are almost ready. First science light is
   expected within the next weeks using a single-pixel 3mm receiver. It
   is planned to install the AzTEC 1mm bolometer camera to use the
   inner 30m, while the full 50m are being prepared. It is planned to
   map M33 with AzTEC. It is not yet decided whether the SEQUOIA 3mm
   array receiver will also be available while not all panels of the
   50m dish are in place.

   Steve will lead a CARMA CO 1-0 mapping proposal for the next
   deadline.

   Jonathan leads a CO 2-1 mapping project at IRAM/30m. 60 hours are
   scheduled for late August 08 to map the southern part of the
   Herschel strip. It is planned to resubmit a larger proposal for the
   September deadline. By coincidence, IRAM will probably issue a
   special call for large programs.

   Jonathan and Baerbel are currently reducing the 3D VLA HI data and
   are in close contact with David Thilker. It not yet clear whether
   additional GBT data will be needed.

   Frank announced that the HARP/JCMT proposal to map CO 3-2
   has been accepted (80 hours).

   Carsten summarized the status of the SMART/NANTEN2 492/810 GHz
   heterodyne receiver. This array receiver had been in use at KOSMA
   many years and has been installed at the NANTEN2 site in the Atcama
   only recently, i.e. just few weeks ago. It is currently being
   commissioned. With 8 pixels per frequency band, it allows efficient
   mapping of both CI lines simultaneously. The Cologne/Bonn team
   around Markus, Juergen, Frank, will map the Herschel stripe.

   Gordon will help writing a flanking proposal to observe CI at the
   CSO. Michael submitted an APEX proposal.

   Paul suggests to obtain new 3d Halpha data using the 4.2m William
   Herschel Telescope. (We should check Hoopes & Walterbos (2000). We
   could also use the 2.3m Aristarchos telescope in Athens where
   Manolis has a hand on.)

Note added after the meeting:

   A proposal to map 850micron dust at LABOCA/APEX (PI: Andreas) was
   rejected. The PC argued that science is good but source elevation is
   too low. While M33 doesn't rise above 35deg in the Atacama, our
   argument had been that the high airmass is more than offset by the
   excellent water vapour. Anyway, we plan to submit SCUBA-2 and MAMBO
   proposals to map the dust at 450, 850, 1200 micron, supplementing
   the PACS-SPIRE photometric maps.

Other business:

Applications for NASA funding have been accepted (Steve, Daniela, Gordon)

I will move to Granada end of July, taking-up my new position at
IRAM. As for my scientific activities, HERMES will have highest
priority. My new e-mail address is kramer@iram.es . I'll create new
HERMES web pages in August, including internal wiki pages collecting
the prep work.

Best regards,
Carsten

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