This year’s YERAC will be organized and sponsored by the MPI for Radioastronomy in collaboration with its IMPRS for Astronomy and Astrophysics. As in most years since 1968, early stage radioastronomers (i.e. PhD candidates and postdocs) will meet, discuss and network in a relaxed atmosphere. Each participant is given the opportunity to give an oral talk.
Please, find more detailed information here.
The Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) will open a call for PhD and Post-Doctoral fellowships, from 15th June to 15th July 2016. The positions are for up to 4 and 6 years, respectively for PhD and Post-Doctoral applications (tuition fees are covered in the case of PhD fellowships). The selection is done by FCT.
The Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) welcomes pre-applications until June 30th, 2016.
More details in the IA announcement page.
Five years passed so quickly, and half a decade seems a lot in correspondence to the amount of great science ALMA has enabled thus far. As a result, the conference “Half a Decade of ALMA: Cosmic Dawns transformed” will be held on 20th-23rd September 2015 in Indian Wells, California (USA).
A list of invited speakers and topic they will cover is already online, as well as the preliminary programme layout.
Note that a pre-registration and abstract submission are now open.
We hope to see you there!
We are happy to note the increased interest ALMA has on the portuguese astronomical community. The latest Call for Proposals closed on the 21st April 2016, and resulted in over 1600 proposals from all over the world, with almost 60 being PI’ed or co-I’ed by researchers working in Portugal. These proposals are distributed over the Science Categories “Cosmology and the high redshift universe”, “Interstellar medium, star formation and astrochemistry”, and “Circumstellar disks, exoplanets and the Solar system”.
This is a robust increase over the submission for Cycle 3, which resulted in 8 proposals with a portuguese participation being accepted.
We will be on the lookout for the outcome of the review process in August.
Allegro, the Netherlands node of the European ALMA Regional Centre (ARC) at Leiden Observatory, invites applications for a postdoctoral support position. As part of the European ARC network, Allegro supports ALMA users and ALMA operations and development.
More information in the announcement webpage.
The ALMA Cycle 4 Call for Proposals is now open until 21st April 2016. This cycle will run from October 2016 to September 2017. Check the call webpage for more detailed information including new array capabilities.
Note the menu side bar where one will find key guiding documents and tools such as the Proposer’s Guide, the Proposal Templates, the Observing Tool, a web-based Sensitivity Calculator, or the always helpful ALMA Primer.
Should you need any help, do not hesitate to contact us by any of the available means. Also, stay up to date by subscribing to our mailing list (check bottom left corner in our homepace).
Good luck!
Dear colleagues,
The call for 1mm Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) proposals to use phased ALMA at Band 6 in Cycle 4, in collaboration with the Event Horizon Telescope Consortium (EHTC), will be released to coincide with the ALMA Cycle 4 Call for Proposals in March 2016. The EHTC is expected to comprise the Submillimeter Array, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the Submillimeter Telescope, the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment, the South Pole Telescope, the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano, the IRAM 30m telescope, and an antenna from the Northern Extended Millimeter Array.
The same scientific justification must be submitted in response to the ALMA and VLBI network calls. NRAO will facilitate this for the 1mm VLBI call by having proposers submit a copy of their ALMA Cycle 4 proposal in response to the 1mm VLBI call, approximately one week after the ALMA proposal deadline in April.
Further details, along with technical information for phased ALMA and the EHTC, will be made available with the 1mm VLBI Call for Proposals. It is expected that observing will take place in March or April 2017, when ALMA will be in a compact configuration suitable for efficient phasing.
Regards,
The European ALMA Regional Centre
SEPIA (Swedish ESO PI receiver for Apex) is a new instrument at APEX, the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment. SEPIA is offered in Band 9 (conditional on the anticipated successful commissioning) for a Science Verification (SV) phase. First light has been successfully achieved (Feb 2016) and commissioning will start in April 2016.
The purpose of the Science Verification observations for SEPIA Band 9 is to execute programmes testing a various number of science cases for which the instrument was designed. Those programmes will be chosen also to test the various modes of operation.
The deadline for submission is Friday 11 March 2016, 12:00 CET.
More information in the call webpage.
We are glad to announce the Portuguese ALMA Community Days to be held on 14th and 15th March 2016 at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Science in Oporto.
WORKSHOP PROGRAMME:
— 14th March
11h00—11h30 – “The observatory ALMA” (Hugo Messias)
11h30—12h30 – “From our solar system to the Galactic centre” (Elizabeth Humphreys, ESO)
12h30—14h00 – [Lunch]
14h00—15h00 – “The Extra-galactic Universe and its Cosmology” (Israel Matute)
15h00—15h30 – “Proposing for time and the ALMA Observing Tool” (Ciro Pappalardo)
15h30—16h00 – “Observation simulations” (Hugo Messias)
16h00—16h20 – [coffee break]
16h20—18h00 – Science discussion — bring your own science case
— 15th March
09h30—11h00 – Face-to-face hands-on: ALMA Observing Tool
11h00—12h30 – Face-to-face hands-on: Observation simulations
12h30—14h00 – [Lunch]
14h00—16h00 – Face-to-face hands-on (general)
FEE: No fee is required.
REGISTRATION DEADLINE: [passed]
REQUIREMENTS: If the user is interested to participate in the hands-on sessions, please bring a laptop with the ALMA Observing Tool and the latest CASA version (4.5.2) installed.
SURVEY:
New ALMA Science Verification data is now available through the Science Portal. These comprise Band-4 observations of CH3OH and CH3CN transitions toward the triple proto-star system IRAS 16293-2422. Previous Science Verification data on this same source has already been used to provide a detailed dynamical characterisation of the binary system therein and its molecular complexity (Pineda et al. 2012).