From the Director

In this newsletter, we celebrate the commissioning of the 3-mm system at the Compact Array. This marks the culmination of seven years' effort at the ATNF and is a tribute to the skill and dedication of the technicians, engineers and scientists who worked on the project. It is in the nature of these leading-edge endeavours that initial time scales are subject to significant uncertainty due to the technology risks knowingly undertaken. The major delay in commissioning the 3-mm system was, in a large part, due to the need to develop the MMIC-based receiver technology in-house. Nevertheless, the development of this engineering capability is now of crucial importance for SKA-related work.

The ATNF also acknowledges the community's support in their response to the final slippage in the commissioning time scale, which required significant re-scheduling of existing runs and the loss of a few programs to use the 3- and 12-mm systems.

Despite the delays, the high demand for the system and the potential science impact of the early programs underscores the importance of upgrading the Compact Array to mm-wave astronomy. Strategically, the Compact Array now provides a mm-wave capability in the Southern Hemisphere that can be used in part as a pathfinder for ALMA science, providing important complementary and/or support observations in the pre-ALMA period over the next five years.

Given this window of opportunity, it is important that everything is done to maximise the efficiency of the mm-wave observations over the coming years. Observing in this domain brings new challenges, particularly the far greater dependency on atmospheric conditions. The ATNF will be reviewing how best to optimise the scheduling of 3-mm observations in coming semesters, both by gaining a better knowledge of the atmospheric conditions and by reviewing flexible scheduling options, including the existing swap-time program. Furthermore, the move towards remote operation of Mopra is an additional strategy in maximising the science outcomes for mm-wave astronomy at the ATNF.

In the near future, we can look forward to adding further mm-wave capability at the ATNF via the commissioning of the new Mopra 3-mm receiver, with extended frequency coverage above 105 GHz, and the MOPS broadband (8 GHz) filterbank. By the same token as above, both these developments are not without their associated outstanding engineering risks. Consequently no hard and fast guarantees can be given at this stage about their availability at the start of the next mm-wave observing season. However, the strategic importance of both completing the upgrade of the ATNF's mm-wave capability and development of the digital filterbank technology for the SKA-related MNRF Compact Array Broadband Backend (CABB) project means that this program will have the highest priority over the coming months.

Brian Boyle
(Brian.Boyle@csiro.au)