Netherlands ALMA+JWST Joint Science Day

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Allegro is pleased to announce the first ALMA+JWST Joint Science Day, which will take place on January 30th, 2024, at Kapteyn Astronomical Institute (Room 161 on the 1st floor) in Groningen. We would like to invite all members of our communities to present your latest scientific results obtained with ALMA and/or JWST. A particular emphasis will be given to projects combining both instruments, but not exclusively, depending on demand. We invite contributions on the synergies with other facilities too. During the Science Day, we will also have talks related to ALMA and JWST technical aspects, news and outlook. The meeting will include ample time to discuss user experiences and related topics.

Invited speakers:

  • Karina Caputi (Kapteyn Astronomical Institute)
  • Łukasz Tychoniec (Leiden Observatory)
  • Martin Zwaan (ESO)
  • Nicolas Crouzet (Leiden Observatory)

 

Netherlands ALMA+JWST Joint Science Day Jan. 30, 2024
Session I (Chair: Alex Hygate)
1000-1005 Welcome (Allegro)
1005-1020 Tom Oosterloo (ASTRON, Groningen) Closing the feedback-feeding loop of the radio galaxy 3C 84 ALMA 
1020-1035 Pratika Dayal (Groningen) Early galaxy formation and its large-scale effects
1035-1050 Ivana van Leeuwen (Leiden) Characterizing the contribution of dust-obscured star formation at ≳ 5 using 19 serendipitously identified [CII] emitters
1050-1105 John McKean (Groningen) Testing the mass complexity of massive elliptical galaxies with ALMA
1105-1125 Martin Zwaan (ESO) The latest from ALMA
1125-1140 ALMA Q&A and discussion
1140-1150 Short break
1150-1250 Fernanda Roman-Oliveira (Groningen) Dynamics and turbulence of regular rotating disc galaxies at z ~ 4.5
1205-1225 Karina Caputi (Groningen) (Invited talk)
1225-1315 Lunch
Session II (Chair: Veronica Allen)
1315-1335 Łukasz Tychoniec (Leiden) Accretion and ejection in a protostellar system linked with ALMA & JWST synergy
1335-1350 Inga Kamp (Groningen) The two prominent disks around TWHya and PDS70
1350-1405 Ardjan Sturm (Leiden) Measuring the icy content of protoplanetary disks using the synergy between JWST and ALMA
1405-1420 Milou Temmink (Leiden) Studying (drift-enhanced) H2O in compact planet-forming disk with JWST-MIRI/MRS
1420-1430 Short break
Session III (Chair: Monica Huang)
1430-1445 Victorine Buiten (Leiden) JWST Reveals Highly-Excited CO in Nucleus of LIRG VV 114
1445-1500 Paul van der Werf (Leiden) TBD
1500-1515 Wout Goesaert (Leiden) A new ALMA view on the Circinus torus and circumnuclear disk
1515-1530 Mathilde Bouvier (Leiden) Sulphur-bearing species as star formation tracers towards the Central Molecular Zone of NGC 253
1530-1545 Joshua Butterworth (Leiden) Molecular Isotopologue Measurements in NGC253 as Possible Tracers of Stellar Evolution
1545-1600 Raffaella Morganti (ASTRON, Groningen) Radio jets expanding in the cold molecular ISM: the case of PKS 0023-26
1600-1610 Short break
Session IV (Chair: Violette Impellizzeri)
1610-1625 Yuan Chen (Leiden) Tracing the formation of complex organic molecules (COMs) from ice to gas using JWST and ALMA
1625-1640 Martijn van Gelder (Leiden) Even better together: a combined study with JWST/MIRI and ALMA on SO2 in a young protostellar system
1640-1655 Julia C. Santos (Leiden) SO2 and OCS towards high-mass protostars with ALMA: a comparative study between gas and ice
1655-1710 Jayatee Kanwar (Groningen) Hydrocarbon-rich disks around very low-mass stars
1710 End of meeting
Directions to Kapteyn Astronomical Institute

Astronomy/Kapteyn Institute, SRON (building name: Kapteynborg)
Room 161 on the 1st floor
Landleven 12
9747 AD Groningen

  • Public transport (time table information can be tapped from 9292 or Google map)
    Train (to Groningen Central Station) + Bus (from Groningen Central Station to Kapteyn Astronomical Institute)
    – train run by NS – arriving at Groningen Central Station, ticket can be purchased via OV-chipkaart
    – bus run by Arriva – line 15 (arriving at bus stop: Nijenborgh), ticket can be purchased via OV-chipkaart
  • Car – we HIGHLY encourage whoever plans to drive please consider carpooling with others to minimize our carbon footprint. Please organize carpooling among yourself, but let us know if you need help.

Further details regarding bus route, parking, and more accessibility information, please refer to: https://www.rug.nl/staff/location/5419

bus_kapteyn

entrance_kapteyn

ALMA Cycle 10 Statistics

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The ALMA cycle 10 proposal submission statistics again saw some new records. The number of overall submitted proposals for all arrays was 1679 – with 91 as ACA stand-alone projects and 44 large programs (compared to 40 large programs in Cycle 9).  Even though the total number of submitted proposals is lower than for the previous two cycles (1769 proposals in Cycle 9) the overall time requested actually surged again, with over 29,000 hours requested on the 12-m array. The region that saw the highest number of proposals submitted was (again) Europe with a request of 12,177 hours on the 12-m array, also now withstanding the highest oversubscription (8.4), followed by North America (9196 hours, oversubscription of 6.4) , East Asia (5940 hours, oversubscription of 6.2) and Chile (1508 hours, oversubscription of 3.5).  The percentages of proposals for the 12-m array per region, science category, and requested receiver band for regular (top) and large programs (bottom) are shown in the figure below.

 

The percentage of proposals for the 12-m array per region, science category, and requested receiver band for regular programs.

The percentage of proposals for the 12-m array per region, science category, and requested receiver band for large programs.

 

A novelty of Cycle 10 was the introduction of Joint proposals, which resulted in a great success for the observatory: there were 26 proposals submitted to ALMA jointly with JWST, 10 with VLA and another 10 with the VLT, of which 3 proposals requested time in 2 or more partner observatories. 

The final accepted list of proposals contained four large programs (in the categories of planetary science, high-mass star formation, and galaxies (mid- and high-redshift), four joint proposals for which ALMA is the main observatory (with the VLA and JWST), and six VLBI proposals. Despite the high oversubscription, the statistics for the Netherlands were also positive, with 15 PI  proposals accepted (for 36 submitted) and a much wider 96 proposals accepted as collaborators. Of the 7300 hours requested for the 12m array, ~ 3200 hours were awarded in Category 1 (High-z Universe), ~1600 hours in Category 2 (Galaxies), ~850 hours in Category 3 (Star Formation), ~1400 hours in Category 4 (Disks) and finally ~300 hours were awarded in Category 5 (Stars). 

You can find more information about the ALMA Cycle 10 statistics at this link: https://almascience.eso.org/documents-and-tools/cycle10/cycle-10-proposal-submission-statistics

ALMA at 10 years: Past, Present, and Future

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The ALMA partnership is organizing a conference to commemorate 10 years of ALMA Science Observations, taking place in Puerto Varas, Chile, on 4-8 December 2023. The aim of the conference is to look back on the observatory’s accomplishments, highlight the latest ALMA results from all scientific fields, as well as look forward to future technical developments. The latter will include a focus on its ambitious 2030 development roadmap and in particular the ongoing plans for the Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade that will ultimately quadruple the system bandwidth and improve observing efficiency and sensitivity for both continuum and spectral line observations. 

The conference will have a hybrid format and while in-person attendance has reached capacity and is closed, on-line participation, including posters, is open until November 1, 2023 (register for online attendance here). 

For more information, visit the conference website: https://www.almaobservatory.org/en/alma-at-10-years-past-present-and-future/

Lorentz Workshop: Tuning to the high frequency ALMA Universe

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In the week of September 4-8, an ALMA-dedicated workshop will take place at the Lorentz Center in Leiden.  The workshop aims at gathering the ALMA community to discuss and further develop the unique science that can be achieved at the highest frequencies offered (Bands 8, 9, and 10).  ALMA is the only ground-based interferometer that can routinely observe at frequencies > 350 GHz, making it a truly unique instrument. At the workshop, we aim to discuss the status of high frequency observations for galactic and extragalactic science and to explore which questions have arisen in the field that can be answered with high frequency observations. We will also discuss future developments, technologies, and the ALMA upgrade. The overall goal is to create new ideas, collaborations and synergies within our community and the observatory that will enhance the discovery space of ALMA.

The workshop will be attended by 50 participants from several relevant scientific areas from all ALMA regions, the executives and the Joint ALMA observatory. 

For more information visit: https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/tuning-to-the-high-frequency-alma-universe.html

IAU I-HOW Radio Astronomy Workshop

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A joint Iran and Türkıye radio astronomy workshop is set to take place at Erciyes University in Kayseri in Türkıye in the next two weeks (Sep. 4-15). The workshop is part of the IAU Hands-On Workshops (I-HOW) initiative that aims to train young scientists in developing countries in accessing, analyzing and using the vast amounts of astronomical data currently available in archives for their research projects. The workshop will focus on teaching students and young researchers how to analyze radio data from arrays such as VLA, ALMA, MeerKAT, and LOFAR. The two-week workshop will provide ample time for lectures, tutorials, scientific talks of a wide range of topics, and hands-on projects. The students are also given an opportunity to present their own scientific works and request assistance on their own projects from the team of lecturers. Experts from Allegro as well as the Italian and UK ALMA Regional Centre Nodes will be at the workshop training students on how to access, calibrate, image, and analyze ALMA observations. For more information, see the website of I-HOW Radio Astronomy Workshop.

New Allegro computing hardware

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Allegro has purchased a new set of more powerful computing servers and a new disk server with a larger amount of storage space, in order to provide enhanced computing services for our user community. We will have five new computing servers available to our user community for the processing and analysis of their ALMA data. Each server will have dual 32-core/64-thread 3.25GHz processors and 512GB of RAM. Our new disk server will provide 1.5 Petabytes of storage for our user community. The disk server will have 84 disks, along with 128GB of RAM and dual 16-core/32-thread 3.0GHz processor. The servers are connected to each other with a dedicated 2×25 Gigabits per second network and will be externally accessible via a 10 Gigabits per second network. Allegro’s investment in increased storage space and improved computing hardware will allow us to continue to meet the growing demand for our computing resources from our user community. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you are in need of computing or storage resources.

Science Highlight: All quiet at z=4.5

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Standard galaxy formation models expect that young galaxies should be highly turbulent and kinematically chaotic, as a result of violent gas accretion and frequent mergers. Observations appear to tell a very different story. In this paper, Roman-Oliveira (Kapteyn Institute), Fraternali and Rizzo (2023, MNRAS 521, 1045) show archival ALMA data of the [C II] 158 micron line of five galaxies at z ~ 4.5 at 0.1-0.2 arcsec resolution (~1 kpc). All these galaxies show clear velocity gradients in the [C II] line. Four of these can be explained as rotationally supported disk, and only one is a likely unresolved merger. Turbulent velocities are low, showing that quiescent disks are common even at z ~ 4.5. This paper also shows that the high resolutions offered by ALMA are essential to separate the quiescent disks from localized kinematic features such as inflow/outflow. It also illustrates the potential for discovery through publicly accessible ALMA archival data, even for previously published data that were never interpreted together.

 

Figure: Observed and modeled velocity patterns of ALMA archival [C II] line emission of the five galaxies at z~4.5 studied by Roman-Oliveira et al. (2023).

First fringes for the ALMA Band-2 pre-production receivers

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Over the next few years, ALMA will open up the 2.6-4.5 mm wavelength range for scientific observations with its slew of newly developed Band 2 receivers. The first three Band-2 ‘pre-production’ receivers were recently installed at ALMA, developed and built by the NOVA submillimeter group at the University of Groningen together with GARD/Chalmers University, Sweden, INAF Italy, NAOJ Japan, the University of Chile, and ESO. ‘First fringes’ were obtained with this set of receivers, marking the moment when ALMA opens its eyes at these wavelengths. [more information]

Postdoctoral Support Position at Allegro

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Allegro, the Netherlands node of the European ALMA Regional Centre (ARC) at Leiden Observatory, invites applications for one or more postdoctoral support position(s).

The position offers the opportunity for research at one of the major centres of astronomy in the Netherlands as well as an in-depth involvement in the development and operations of ALMA. In particular, we are interested in candidates who (wish to) pursue research with ALMA or ALMA data as a prominent part of their scientific interest. Standard 50% time will be available for personal research and successful candidate(s) will have access to the full resources of Leiden Observatory. Besides independent research, the appointee is expected to spend time on the technical and user support of ALMA and we are looking for an enthusiastic and motivated applicants to work within the Allegro team on a variety of topics.

Qualifications: PhD in Astronomy, Physics, or related field, or proven track record of relevant experience. Research experience in fields directly related to submm astronomy. Experience with radio interferometric data and CASA software is highly desirable. Proficiency in Linux. The Leiden ARC node values diversity in its workforce.

The appointment will be for two years initially, renewable up to a maximum of four years based on need, funding, and performance. The position comes with a competitive salary and full benefits of an employee in the public sector.

Applications can be submitted electronically at: https://jobs.strw.leidenuniv.nl/2023/AllegroPD1/

Included Benefits:
Leiden University offers an attractive benefits package that includes additional vacation (8%) and end-of-year (8.3%) bonuses, sick leave, maternity and parental leaves, and retirement benefits. Candidates from outside the Netherlands may be eligible for a substantial tax break.

Application Deadline:
Friday, September 15, 2023