Print

ALMA Cycle 8 pre-announcement and Pulsar Observation

The Joint ALMA Observatory has made the Cycle 8 pre-announcement for observations, which will start in October 2020. The Call for Proposal (CfP) for this Cycle is expected to be issued on 17 March 2020 with a deadline of 15 April 2020.

A total of 4300 are expected on the 12-m array and 300 hours on the 7-m ACA. The call will be for proposals of the following types: Regular, Large Programs, Target of Opportunity and VLBI. Cycle 8 will not include the two longest baseline 12-m array configurations. Maximum baselines in Cycle 8 will therefore be 8.5 km, with the longer baselines configurations returning in Cycle 9.

In addition to the observing modes announced in the Cycle 8 pre-announcement, ALMA will also be setting up a pulsar observing mode utilising the ALMA phased array. More details will be released in the CfP.

 

ALMA Large Program Workshop

02-03 March 2020

Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics

Alan Turing Building, The University of Manchester

Manchester, UK

Website

The UK ARC Node would like to announce the upcoming UK ALMA Large Program Workshop, 2-3 March 2020 at the UK ARC Node, University of Manchester. This workshop will discuss ALMA Large Programs, defined as programs requesting more than 50 hours of observing time, that are currently being observed or have been observed. Prior large programs have targeted protoplanetary discs, evolved stars, nearby galaxies, gravitational lenses, and deep fields.

The workshop will introduce the publicly accessible data available from existing programs, discuss how to propose new programs, and describe the requirements for successful large programs. There will also be the opportunity for hands-on training and support to work with staff at the ARC Node on data from large or other ALMA programmes after the workshop as well as support for the preparation of proposals for ALMA Cycle 8.

 

ALMA User Experience Survey

With the ALMA Cycle 8 call for proposal approaching quickly, the ALMA End to End User experience working group (e2e-WG) would like to advertise the ALMA user experience survey. The e2e-WG are seeking feedback on how to improve the many aspects of ALMA user experience, from the Call for Proposal stage through to working with ALMA data (be it a project you proposed or Archival data). The ultimate goal is to identify and address any issues which prevent the best user experience and effect scientific output.