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ALMA Cycle 8 Call for Proposal

The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) and partner organisations in East Asia, Europe, and North America, are pleased to announce the ALMA Cycle 8 Call for Proposals for scientific observations to be scheduled from October 2020 to September 2021. For Cycle 8, the JAO anticipates having 4300 hours of approved science time on the 12-m array and 3000 hours on the Atacama Compact Array (ACA), also known as the Morita Array.

The Call for Proposals opened Tuesday, 17 March 2020, at 1500UT and will close at 1500UT on Wednesday, 15 April 2020.

The JAO have also made the following statement: "ALMA is carefully monitoring the situation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and the evolving global situation and is considering the possibility of needing to delay the proposal deadline which is currently set for 15:00 UT on Wednesday 15 April 2020. Updates will be posted to the ALMA Science Portal on a weekly basis at http://almascience.org. The first update will be posted on Tuesday, 24 March 2020. For additional questions regarding the Cycle 8 Call for Proposals, contact the ALMA Helpdesk at http://help.almascience.org."

 

Support for ALMA Cycle 8 Large Programmes

ALMA Large Program (LPs) are defined as projects with total observing time over 50 hours on the 12-m array and 150 hours for the ACA. The computing resources for such programmes are extensive, and a data management plan is required as part of your proposal.  If you are thinking of submitting an LP, the UK ARC Node encourages you to get in touch with us.

UK ARC Node staff are available to consult on such programmes including optimising the observing strategy, computing requirements for LPs, the resources available at the UK ARC Node, and other ways in which we can support your program.

To contact us about LPs (or any other project) please use the ALMA Helpdesk.

In addition to providing consultations, later in the year the UK ARC Node will be organising a workshop focussed on initiating planning and collaborative efforts for future Large Programmes. The workshop will be announced in a future newsletter.

 

Remote Support During the Current Coronavirus Situation

With the on going COVID-19 outbreak, the UK ARC Node will be providing remote / electronic support to users only for the next several weeks. This is in compliance with local recommendations at the JBCA and the University of Manchester.

If you require user support in the coming weeks, we are contactable via the usual means (see our contact information page) and can provide a range of electronic support options to help you with your ALMA requirements.

 

ALMA Observation Support Tool Version 8

The UK ARC Node are please to announce Version 8 of the ALMA Observation Support Tool (OST), an online tool which can be used to simulate ALMA observations to aid with proposal preparation and observation modelling. The OST is hosted and maintained by the UK ARC Node for use by the general astronomical community. In Version 8, the OST has been updated to include Cycle 8 antenna configurations whilst retaining all of its previous functionality.

The OST can be found at http://almaost.jb.man.ac.uk.