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ALMA Cycle 3 Call for Proposals closure

The first statistics on the ALMA Cycle 3 call for proposals points to a great European interest in this facility. European-led projects comprise 42% of the total proposed projects.

The pressure remains high since 9037h were requested for a total of <2100h to be granted to Cycle3-call projects.

Bands 3, 6 and 7 remain the most favourite ones, and, except for “Stellar Evolution and the Sun”, the general community seems equally engaged to eagerly work with ALMA data.

More details in this webpage.

Herschel Data Processing Workshop for Newcomers

This online-only workshop will happen  on 16th-19th June and the registration deadline is on 12th June.

It is intended preferably to PhD-students and Post-docs who have recently started working on projects based on the analysis of Herschel observations., and have little or no previous experience in the analysis of Herschel observations using HIPE.

The workshop will consist of overview talks together with  a mixture of tutorials and short demos in the format of presentations that will be broadcast live in the mornings of every day.

More information in the workshop web-page.

Call for Proposals for Cycle 3

The Cycle 3 call has just opened. The announcement webpage provides full description and supporting documentation.

The main improvement is clearly the significant increase in configuration extension, allowing for spatial resolutions as fine as tens of milli-arcseconds. The observable spectrum ranges from ~3mm to 0.35mm. Large projects (>100h) are still not possible.

The proposal submission deadline is 15h UT on 23rd April. Cycle 3 observations are expected to start in October 2015.

Should you have any question regarding proposal preparation or any other issue regarding this call, do not hesitate to contact PACE.

Good luck!

Long-Baseline campaign Science Verification data

The Science Verification data resulting from the 2014 ALMA Long-Baseline (~10km) campaign has just been released in the science verification webpage. This new capability to be available in Cycle-3 suits ALMA with spatial resolving powers as fine as a few tens milli-arcsecond.

This release includes:
Juno (asteroid): observations of continuum in Band 6 (233 GHz);
Mira (AGB star): observations of several SiO transitions (isotopologues and vibrational states) and continuum in Bands 3 and 6;
HL Tau (proto-planetary disc): observations of continuum and spectral line in Band 3, and
continuum only in Bands 6 & 7;
SDP.81 (lensed galaxy): observations of continuum and spectral lines in Bands 4, 6 & 7.

More details can be found in the corresponding CASA guide page.

Portuguese ALMA National Community Day

We are glad to announce the Portuguese ALMA National Community Day to be held on 24th February 2015 at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Science in Lisbon.

WORKSHOP PROGRAMME:
11h00—11h30 – “The observatory ALMA“, José M. Afonso (IA-Lisboa, PACE Coordinator);
11h30—12h30 – “From our solar system to the Galactic centre“, Nanda Kumar (IA-Porto);
12h30—14h00 – [Lunch]
14h00—15h00 – “The Extra-galactic Universe and its Cosmology“, Hugo Messias (IA-Lisboa, PACE Lead-Scientist);
15h00—15h30 – “
Proposing for time and the ALMA Observing Tool” (TBD);
15h30—16h00 – “Observation simulations“, Hugo Messias(IA-Lisboa, PACE Lead-Scientist);
16h00—16h20 – [coffee break]
Optional from 16h20 – Face-to-face hands-on (PACE team).

TRAVEL SUPPORT: a limited number of participants may apply for this. We expect to support about 20 round-trip train tickets. It will be awarded in a first-comes-first-gets way.

FEE: No fee is required.

REGISTRATION DEADLINE: 23h59 13th February.

ALMA Cycle 3 Pre-announcement

ALMA Cycle 3 call for proposals has just been pre-announced here. The anticipated array capabilities have improved significantly, including baselines as long as 10km for Bands 3, 4, and 6, meaning resolutions of tens of milli-arcseconds.

Important dates are the Call for Proposals on 24th March and the Proposal Submission deadline on 23rd April.

Further details on the pre-announcement webpage.