Australia Telescope Users Committee report

The last ATUC meeting was held on 3 - 4 March 2003. The committee thanked retiring members, Simon Ellingsen, David Barnes, Dion Lewis and Martin Meyer who have completed their terms on ATUC. The committee extended special thanks to Professor Ron Ekers as he stands down as ATNF Director, for his service to the ATNF user community.

As in all ATUC meetings, observatory reports were presented by each Officer-in-Charge. There was some discussion on the scheduling and remote observing options during the period of the IAU General Assembly (www.astronomy2003.com) as well as the over-subscription of mm-observing time coupled with a shortage of suitable cm-swap projects. In presenting the Parkes report, John Reynolds discussed the impact of the NASA Mars tracking project and receiver upgrade options. Tasso Tziouomis presented a VLBI update and also outlined the "Radio Quiet Zones" initiative.

A report on the Compact Array's online archive project was presented by Robin Wark. This is progressing well; all 1.5 Terrabytes of data are now on disk in Canberra, thanks to sterling work by Prue Sutton during her summer vacation. Rob Power (CSIRO division of Computing, Mathematics & Information Systems) is now creating a set of user interfaces and converting the data to a format compatible with the emerging VOTable format (vizier.u-strasbg.fr/doc/VOTable ).

Jess O'Brien presented the latest revision of the Compact Array Users Guide. This now requires input from Compact Array users, particularly for specialized observations.

Michelle Storey gave a review of the highly successful visit of the LOFAR siting committee with an update on current time scales and possible options for Australian participation. Ron Ekers presented his last report as ATNF Director and an update on the ATNF SKA-demonstrator options and developments.

As a result of further discussions, ATUC undertook to compile a report on the required upgrades for single-dish spectral-line software for ATNF telescopes. This should be available shortly, from the ATUC homepage (www.atnf.csiro.au/management/atuc ).

Vince McIntyre and Carole Jackson
(Vince.McIntyre@csiro.au)
(Carole.Jackson@csiro.au)