ALMA Cycle 6 Call for Proposals in now open

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The ALMA Director, on behalf of the Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) and the partner organizations in East Asia, Europe, and North America, is pleased to announce the ALMA Cycle 6 Call for Proposals. It is anticipated that 4000 hours of the 12-m Array time and 3000 hours of the Atacama Compact Array (ACA) time, also known as the Morita Array, will be available for successful proposals from Principal Investigators (PIs) in Cycle 6.

ALMA Cycle 6 proposal submission will open at
15:00 UT on Tuesday, 20 March 2018

The Cycle 6 proposal submission deadline is
15:00 UT on Thursday, 19 April 2018

You can find the Call for Proposals at:
https://almascience.eso.org/proposing/call-for-proposals.

In the following link you can also find a poster prepared by the EPO department at JAO with a summary of the new capabilities offered in Cycle 6:
ALMA_Cycle6_Capabilities_Poster

Proposal Preparation Day – April 9th, 2018

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Prior to the deadline for the ALMA Cycle 6 proposal submission (April 19th), Allegro will host a Proposal Preparation Day. Bring in your proposals and we will assist you with the technical aspects and help you exploring their feasibility, while you work on it during that day. Allegro staff will be there to provide tips & tricks and answer all your questions.

Date: Monday April 9th, 2018 (9:30-17:30h)
Address: Niels Bohrweg 2, 2333 CA Leiden, the Netherlands — Huygens building — Room HL-111

You can register for the Proposal Preparation Day at the following link.

In addition to this proposal preparation day, remember you can always ask support from Allegro to help you with your proposals or ALMA related questions at any time.

Find more details below:

  • Participants
  • Directions


     

    PARTICIPANTS

    Name

    		Institution
    Hannah Stacey

    		Kapteyn/ASTRON

    Joseph Callingham

    		ASTRON

    Kirsty Butler

    		Leiden Observatory

    Hanneke Poorta

    		API Amsterdam

    Andrew Barr

    		Leiden Observatory

    Tobias Beuchert

    		API/UvA

    Huib van Langevelde

    		JIVE/Leiden

    Mihkel Kama

    		University of Cambridge

    Sierk van Terwisga

    		Leiden Observatory

    Gabriela A Muro-Arena

    		API/UvA

    Matús Rybák

    		Leiden Observatory

    Christian Ginski

    		Leiden Observatory

     

     

    DIRECTIONS

    -Directions to Leiden Observatory

    Note that this is not the old Observatory in the center of Leiden.

    There are regular buses from the Leiden Centraal station, buses 43 (direction Den Haag) or bus 57 (direction Nieuw Vennep). These take around 7 minutes. Please see the link below for more specific details if you will be coming by bus.

    Instructions on how to get to Leiden Observatory, including transportation from Schiphol Airport, can be found here:
    https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/howto.php
    And a site map can be found here:
    https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/map_LC_hotels_stat_web.php

    lorentzcenter

    Note these specify the route to the Lorentz Center, which is in the forward leaning building in the photo. Leiden Observatory and Allegro offices are located on the 4th and 5th floor of that same building. The event will be held in the joining taller building – The Huygens building.

    -Directions inside the building:

    The event will be held on the 1st floor of the Huygens Building (HL), room HL 111.

     

New Science Verification data available: High-resolution observations of HL Tau in Band 4

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New Science Verification data are now listed on the Science Verification data page (source no. 15 on the list: HL Tau).

The observations are:

HL Tau high-angular resolution (~50 mas) observations in Band 4 (continuum-mode) with the 12-m Array
The raw data, calibrated data, reference images and reduction scripts are available for download here.

The original announcement can be found in the ALMA Science Portal.

Image: ALMA image of the young star HL Tau and its protoplanetary disk. This best image ever of planet formation reveals multiple rings and gaps that herald the presence of emerging planets as they sweep their orbits clear of dust and gas. Credit: ALMA (NRAO/ESO/NAOJ); C. Brogan, B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Powerful New Hardware Approved for ALMA

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The development of a new spectrometer for the Morita Array, which forms part of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), has been approved by the ALMA Board. Developed by Japan, the Morita Array is composed of twelve 7-metre antennas and four 12-metre antennas.

You can read the full text of the announcement in the EU ARC Announcements

Image credit: Denisse Lira – ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

ALMA Cycle 6 Pre-announcement

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The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) will start the next cycle of observing (Cycle 6) in October 2018. A Call for Proposals with detailed information on Cycle 6 will be issued in March 2018, with a deadline for proposal submission in April 2018. This pre-announcement highlights aspects of the Cycle 6 proposal call that are needed to plan proposals.

Details about the Cycle 6 Pre-announcenement can be found in the ALMA Science Portal.

Image credit: Carlos Padilla – AUI/NRAO

WVR scaling module is now available

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The software package to optimise the application of the WVR solutions for ALMA Observations from Maud et al. 2017 (A&A, 605, 121; arXiv) is now available to download.

You can find the package to download and further details in the following link.

Allegro hosted the EU ARC All-hands meeting

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During the last week of September the staff working in all the European ARC nodes had their yearly meeting in Den Dolder (NL) hosted by the Allegro node.

This yearly meeting brings together all the expertise in the network, in an unique occasion that allows us to share our experiences, strengthen our links and discuss pass, present and future developments.

We all are looking forward our next meeting organized by our colleagues at the Czech ARC node.

Picture Credit: A. Borkar

Updated ALMA Configuration Schedule for Cycle 5

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The anticipated configuration schedule for Cycle 5 is available at the following link. The schedule was modified from that posted in the Cycle 5 Proposer’s Guide. The changes were made to optimize the schedule in response to the proposal pressure from the top-rated proposals in Cycle 5 and the adverse weather at the ALMA site that affected the configuration schedule at the end of Cycle 4. The most significant change is that Cycle 5 will begin in configuration C43-10 instead of C43-7, and then move to more compact configurations.

You can find this announcement at the ALMA Science Portal.

ALMA Cycle 5 Proposal Review: Detailed Report

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A detailed report on the outcome of the ALMA Cycle 5 Proposal Review Process is now available. The report details the proposal review process, proposal statistics and regional distributions, as well as the proposal distribution across science categories and receiver bands.

The report can be downloaded as a pdf document from the Science Portal news item.

The highest priority Cycle 5 projects are listed at this link.

Status of ALMA Observations and Relocation to Long Baselines

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The ALMA Observatory has experienced back to back severe winter storms, making it difficult to recover the 12-m array for PI observations. This has had an even more detrimental impact on the relocation to the long baselines. Many roads are blocked with 2 meters of snow, high winds often return snow to the cleared locations, and snow is compacting into ice. We have returned to routine observations utilizing the 7-m and Total Power Arrays, and we are working hard to clear the remaining antennas to return to 12-m array PI science and reconfigure to the longest baselines. We will issue an update regarding the revised configuration schedule in the coming weeks

You can find this announcement at the ALMA Science Portal.

Image credit: EFE/Ariel Marinkovic.