Changes to how to write your ALMA proposal for Cycle 8

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For Cycle 8, ALMA is adopting dual-anonymous review. This means that the proposers do not know who the reviewers are, and the reviewers don’t know who is on the proposing team. This has important consequences on how you write your proposal!

ALMA has put together a document with guidelines. Consequently, any text that can identify the proposing team is not allowed. Attempts to convey the identify proposing team in the text may lead to your proposal being disqualified.

What you need to do:

  • Read the guidelines.
  • Write your new proposal according to these guidelines, and rephrase the text of proposals that are re-submissions from previous cycles.

A presentation describing how to write an anonymous ALMA proposal can be found below (pdf file).

Allegro is organizing a proposal preparation workshop on Thursday March 26, where these requirements will be discussed together with other technical information about ALMA Cycle 8. You can register for the Proposal Preparation Day at the following link.

ALMA-VLBI QA2 Workshop– Leiden Lorentz Center, 24-28 February 2020

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Allegro is hosting a QA2 training workshop for phased-ALMA data acquired during VLBI observations, which will be held in Leiden (the Netherlands), on February 24-28 2020.
VLBI is an observing mode offered since Cycle 4, and the first observations were conducted in Apr 2017. The QA2 process for VLBI projects is significantly more complex than the procedure for standard projects, requiring a close loop between ARCs, JAO and VLBI correlators.
The main goal of the workshop is to train ALMA astronomers so that the QA2 work load can be distributed across different regions. The training workshop will involve hands-on work on past cycles datasets.
This workshop is restricted to the trained QA2 analysts in ALMA Regional Centers (ARCs).

 

 

SOC / LOC:

 

Ciriaco Goddi (Chair) Allegro/Dutch ARC node
Geoff Crew Haystack/MIT
Ivan Marti-Vidal University of Valencia
Hugo Messias JAO
Stefanie Muehler German ARC node
Dirk Petry ESO
Helge Rottmann MPIfR
Registered participants:Abhijeet BorkarCzech node

 

European ARC nodes  
Lydia Moser German node
Rosita Paladino Italian node
Kazi Rygl Italian node
Andres Perez Allegro/Dutch node
Daniel Tafoya Nordic node
Tobia Carozzi Nordic node
Ciro Pappalardo PACE/Portuguese node
Adam Avison UK node
Anita Richards UK node
East Asia ARC  
Atsushi Miyazaki Japanese node
Jihyun Kang Korean node
Alfonso Trejo-Cruz Taiwanese node
North America ARC  
Brian Mason NRAO
Erica Keller NRAO
JAO  
David Rebolledo JAO
VLBI Correlators  
Jan Wagner MPIfR
Yurii Pidopryhora MPIfR
HOTELSYou could consider staying either close to the Lorentz Center (about 2.5 km from the center), or near the railway (Leiden Centraal) station (where the center begins).
There are regular buses from the Leiden Centraal station to the Lorentz Center (see the links below for more specific details if you will be coming by bus).
In alternative, you can look into renting a bike for your stay. You can pick this up at the railway station, at the rear (exit towards the hospital). Bikes costs 7.50 euro per day or 37.50 for a week.Near the workshop venue:

 

Hilton Garden Inn (500-m to the Lorentz Center, 4-stars)
Holiday Inn (950-m to the Lorentz Center, 4-stars)
Van der Valk Hotel (1.6-km to the Lorentz Center, 4-stars)

Near the train station / center of Leiden.

Golden Tulip Leiden-centre (Central station, 4-stars)
Fletcher Wellness-Hotel (Central station, 4-stars)
Tulip Inn Leiden-centre (Central station, 3-stars)
Ibis Leiden-centre (Central station, 3-stars)

Boutique Hotel d’Oude Morsch (Near Central station, 3.5-stars)
Best Western City Hotel (Center, 3-stars)

DIRECTIONS

 

-Directions to Leiden ObservatoryNote 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

The venue of the workshop is the Snellius building of the Lorentz Center. The Leiden Observatory and Allegro offices are located on the 4-5th and 11th floor, respectively, of The Huygens building (in front and to the right with respect to the Snellius building).

-Directions inside the building:

 

  • Room TBD on the 2nd floor of the Snellius building:
    hl_226
    At the entrance of the building there is a reception were they can provide you with directions.

ALMA Cycle 8 Pre-Announcement

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Dear ALMA community!

The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) has released the cycle 8 pre-announcement.
Please find all the relevant information in this link

Happy proposal planning!

EAS2020 – Special Session Nr. 13: Eight years of ALMA ground-breaking results.

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We would like to bring to your attention the special session ‘Eight years of ALMA ground-breaking results: A joint venture between the ALMA user community and the ALMA Regional Centres‘ that is organised as part of the yearly meeting of the European Astronomical Society. The conference will take place in Leiden, The Netherlands, on June 29 – July 3, 2020. The Special Session No. 13 will be held on the last day of the conference (July 3rd).

The Special Session SS13 will focus on scientific results that emphasise the connection between the ALMA users and the EU ARC network, and include:

  • Scientific highlights from large programs.
  • Scientific results from special modes with EU-specific strengths:
    high frequencies, polarization, solar observations, deep fields, data combination.
  • Results based on archival research and data mining.
  • Community and EU ARC network software/tools development.
  • Optimization of observations setup and data calibration.
  • Computing facilities for data reduction and analysis.

For more information on the SS13, please visit this link.

For general information on the EAS 2020, please click here.

Abstract submission is open for the SS13 in a form of oral or poster presentations. In order to submit your abstract, please visit the Abstract portal:

Sincerely,
The EAS2020 SS13 SOC.

Conference:Resolving the Extragalactic Universe with ALMA

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There is an open call for applications to the conference “Resolving the Extragalactic Universe with ALMA” to be held November 9-13, 2020, focused on the latest scientific results on the high-redshift universe with the ALMA telescope.

The primary scientific themes are:

• High-z galaxies and quasars, the epoch of reionization.
• High-spatial resolution studies: Galaxy kinematics, outflows, mergers, etc.
• Blind surveys — The unknown.
• Simulations of high-z galaxies.
• Physical conditions in high-z galaxies: Gas mass, dust temperature, SFR, etc.

The Conference will be held at Waseda University (Shinjuku, Tokyo) with a 1-day working excursion to Kamakura. If you wish to attend (space is limited), please apply here

Sincerely,

The Scientific Organizing Committee
Caitlin Casey
Miroslava Dessauges-Zavadsky
Jacqueline Hodge
Akio K. Inoue
Nissim Kanekar
Kana Morokuma
J. Xavier Prochaska

Requesting calibrated data in Europe

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from 1 October 2019 onwards

By popular demand, the EU ARC has implemented a service which permits ALMA users to
request the calibrated data for a given dataset (Member Obs Unit Set, MOUS) to be
made available for download. The service is open both for ALMA PIs or Delegees with
proprietary ALMA data and for archival users wanting to use datasets for which the
proprietary time has expired.

If you have identified a particular MOUS that you want to investigate, please file
a normal Helpdesk ticket in the department “Archive and Data Retrieval (EU)” and
select the “Data request” sub-category.

In the body of the text always specify the project code (e.g. 2015.1.09999.S, one per ticket)
and MOUS UID(s) (e.g. uid___A001_X340_X6 or uid://A001/X340/X6). You can
enumerate up to 10 MOUSs in your request.

The creation and staging will be done one MOUS at a time and you will be notified
*by separate email for each MOUS* as to where you can download the tarred MS(s).
Depending on the workload on the EU ARC systems, it may take days before your
dataset is ready for you.

Your download link will remain valid for 28 days, which means that you have 28 days from the time
of the notification email to download the data.

The service will become available on 1 October 2019.

Netherlands ALMA Science Day — 22 November 2019.

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Allegro is organizing an ALMA Science Day on Friday November 22, 2019, at Leiden Observatory.

Allegro organizes this meeting for the Netherlands ALMA community to share their exciting new science, hear the latest news from the telescope, and discuss user experiences and ALMA-related topics.

  • Program
  • Participants

  • Directions

     

    Program

    The third edition of the Netherlands ALMA Science day will be held in the 2nd floor of the Huygens Building (HL), room HL-226. We will start the program at 11:30 am with lunch. All the registered participants are invited to join us. We will offer sandwiches and fruits for the registered participants. Then, the science talks will start at 12:30. The first afternoon block of talks will finish with the presentation by this year’s invited speaker Dr. M. Zwaan (ESO). Our program is full of exciting topics including results from high-redshift studies, as well as studies of dust and molecular gas in proto-planetary disks. During the second block of talks, we will have a presentation by Dr. C. Goddi (Allegro) on the results of the Event Horizon Telescope!
    We will finish the day with a Borrel at the 11th floor, next to the Allegro offices. We look forward to seeing you!

    Follow this link to see the Program.

    Registered participants: (Last update 13-11-2019)

    Michiel Hogerheijde Leiden Observatory
    Jim Morrison University of Groningen
    Rudolf Le Poole Leiden Observatory
    Dazhi Zhou Leiden Observatory
    Shota Notsu Leiden Observatory, Leiden University
    Zhenlin Zhu SRON/Leiden University
    Prof. Harry van der Laan Leiden Observatory, ASTRON, ESO
    Ruslan Brilenkov Kapteyn Institute, University of Groningen
    Yuan Chen Leiden Observatory
    Gerard Pujol Hernandez API
    Margot Leemker Leiden University
    Huub Rottgering Leiden Observatory
    Marta Frias Castillo Leiden Observatory
    Alvaro Hacar Leiden Observatory
    Rychard Bouwens Leiden University
    Ewine van Dishoeck STRW-UL
    Stefan van der Giessen Leiden University
    Leon Trapman Leiden Observatory
    Gleb Fedoseev Laboratory for Astrophysics, Leiden Observatory
    Huib Intema ICRAR – Curtin University
    Jeroen Terwisscha van Scheltinga Leiden Observatory
    Kirsty Butler Sterrewacht Leiden
    Schuyler Wolff Leiden Observatory
    Sander Schouws Leiden University
    Leindert Boogaard Leiden Observatory
    Robin Mentel Leiden Observatory
    Lukasz Tychoniec Leiden Observatory
    Jozsef Varga Leiden Observatory
    Tabone Leiden University
    Yijun Wang University of Science and Technology of China & Leiden Observatory
    Andrew Barr Leiden Observatory
    Matthew Kenworthy Leiden Observatory
    Alexandru-Daniel Taun University of Groningen
    Vincent Icke Leiden University
    Violeta Gámez Rosas Leiden University
    Pengyu Liu Leiden University
    MARIANNA PATATOUKOU Leiden University
    Martijn van Gelder Leiden Observatory
    Micha Heilman Leiden University
    Pooneh Nazari Leiden University
    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. The event will be held in the joining taller building – The Huygens building. Leiden Observatory and Allegro offices are located on the 4-5th and 11th floor of that same building, respectively.

    -Directions inside the building:

    • HL-226 on the 2nd floor of the Huygens building:
      hl_226

    At the entrance of the building there is a reception were they can provide you with directions.
    The afternoon session will be held on the 2nd floor of the Huygens Building (HL), room HL-226.
    The borrel will be held on the 11th floor of the Huygens Building (HL), next to the Allegro offices (HL-11.22).

ACA Supplemental Call for Proposals

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The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) is now accepting observing proposals for Cycle 7 that request to use the Atacama Compact Array (ACA) in stand-alone mode. Instructions on how to submit proposals can be found on the Cycle 7 Supplemental Call web page.

Users of any nationality or affiliation are invited to submit proposals before the deadline of 15:00 UT on Tuesday 1 October 2019.

Proposals submitted in the Supplemental Call will be peer-reviewed using a distributed system in which each proposal team selects a designated reviewer to participate in the review process. The review process is described in detail in the Supplemental Call documentation.

Users should note that the Supplemental Call proposal submission server will not be available for a few hours on September 10 and September 25 because of scheduled maintenance. The precise downtimes will be noted on the Science Portal. Users will need to update the Observing Tool (OT) after the September 10 maintenance period. For most users, this will happen automatically using the automated web start tool. Information on updating the OT is available at the Observing Tool webpage.

ACA Supplemental Call for Proposals Pre-announcement

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The Cycle 7 Supplemental Call for Proposals is anticipated to open at 15:00 UT on September 3 with a proposal deadline of 15:00 UT on October 1. ALMA expects to allocate approximately 2500 h of observing time on the ACA in the Supplemental Call.
Preliminary information is currently available here.
Complete details of the Supplemental Call will be posted on the ALMA Science Portal on September 3.

Cycle 7 Call for Proposals

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The ALMA Director, on behalf of the Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) and the partner organisations in East Asia, Europe, and North America, is pleased to announce the ALMA Cycle 7 Call for Proposals (CfP) for scientific observations to be scheduled from October 2019 to September 2020. It is anticipated that 4300 hours of the 12-m Array time and 3750 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 7.

The Cycle 7 proposal submission deadline is
15:00 UT on Wednesday, 17 April 2019

For more information please visit the ALMA Science Portal.