The Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey

ALFALFA Fall Semester 2010: Completed Observations

We started the "fall" season on August 17, 2010. The Gregorian dome zenith angle restrictions (3.5^o < Z.A. < 12^o) were still in place, so we were unable to work in the northern zone Dec > +32^o as planned. Instead, we decided to concentrate first on the zenith strip south of zenith (Dec = +17^o). Because of the lower zenith angle restriction, for the Dec = +17^o strip, we had to observe off-meridian, which means a more complicated setup, whereby we had to position the telescope at a predetermined Az, ZA and rotate ALFA so that the beam tracks are equally spaced in Declination. We got a lot of practice doing that last spring, so we were ready for the challenge! But there was not enough time allocated to finish the whole zenith strip, so after getting through the Dec = +17^o grid zone, we moved north and finished the Dec = +23^o drifts. We are still missing from 18.2 to 21^oand north of +32^o

The bad news is that we are still left needing >50 sessions, so we do not anticipating finishing the fall part of the sky until 2012. (:

Several ALFALFA datasets are complete and have been published; see the links to Publications and Data above.

The graphical summaries below indicate the A2010 coverage up to and including the fall 2010 observing season. We try to update them regularly, so they include what's currently scheduled (and therefore may or may not happen).

Yellow indicates planned observations in pass 1.
Green indicates completed observations in pass 1.
Gold indicates planned observations in pass 2.
Cyan indicates completed observations in pass 2.
Brown indicates poor quality data (hardware failure, gain instability or unusual rfi)
Pink indicates the area to be covered next

Click here to see larger version.

The numbers on the left axes refer to the declination setting designations.

Click here to see the actual observing block allocation summary for Fall 2010.

Last modified: Sat Nov 27 11:11:38 EST 2010 by martha