Date:     April 6, 2012 (Friday)
Time:     14:00 to 15:00 EDT
Location: Concord ave 160, 2nd Floor (M-240)

Agenda:
1) Questions and Answers on SMA data reduction in Miriad
2) Progress on developing a catalog of calibrators
   in polarization at submillimeter wavelengths

Catalog - CalPolFlux.cat

The flux calibration was based on the planet model in Miriad using a uniform disk
approach with the ephemeris data from NASA JPL and the The Planck whole disk brightness 
temperature imported from the Caltech thermal models (Courtesy: Mark Gurwell). 
The Mars model used in Miriad has been compared with two others: 

1) supported by the French group (E. Lellouch  and H. Amri) 
that covers from 30-5000 GHz and was used for calibrating Herschel-based observations; 
2) supported by NRAO (Bryan Butler).

The difference in brightness temperature between these models is within ~1%  
in the frequency range covered in the model used in Miriad. Also we
compared the gain scales bootstraped from different planets observed in the
same track, indicating that a 1sigma uncertainty of 10% due to a collective 
errors in modeling, pointing and residual errors in amplitude correction for 
airmass.

New Miriad graphic tool - smacatool

A tentative test code has been exported to RTDC system.    

Usage:
  Task:   smacatool
  in       =  
  in2      =  
  source   = 3C84
  freq     = 230
  delfreq  = 120
  date     =  
  options  =  
  device   = /xs

Example plot - 3C84 lightcurve at 230+/-120 GHz from CARMA (black) and SMA (red)

The error bar for SMA data is the 1sigma rms of the data + 1sigma due to the residual errors
indicated in the scattering  of the gains determined from different planets.   

3) Call for helpers and interested collaborators for QSO/radio extragalactic core 
monitoring program at mm-submm with CARMA & SMA, and potential ToO VLBA observations
during flares.

   This is a joint monitoring project with Berkeley, Brandeis and potential with
NRAO and other schools. The first target is 3C84. Please check our website -

which will give you some details about our immediate plan.

   Jun-Hui Zhao

Astrophysicist at SAO
60 Garden St., MS 78
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel:   617 496 7895
Email: jzhao@cfa.harvard.edu