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.

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.

A noticed before, if one is planing to propose a project making use of ALMA as part of the Global 3mm VBLI Array (GMVA), please note that one mus also submit a the GMVA proposal via the NRAO PST before the 1st February deadline.

More information in the GMVA webpage.

Exciting news for ALMA Cycle 4, which has just been pre-announced. Many new capabilities are now anticipated, such as the use of the Atacama Compact Array alone or ALMA as a VLBI station. Breakthrough science will definitely arise as a result.

On 22nd March 2016, a call will be released, as well as the latest version of the ALMA Observing Tool, with which one will submit proposals until the deadline on 21st April 2016.

More detailed preliminary information on anticipated array capabilities and key dates for Cycle 4 are available here.

For any further information, do not hesitate to contact us by any of the provided contacts.

Good luck!

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is now offering postdoctoral fellowship positions to join the ALMA science operations group. Fellows will be based in the Santiago Central Office in Chile, with eventual shifts to the ALMA Operations Support Facility (OSF) near San Pedro de Atacama for real-time interaction with the telescope. Full details here.

After the communication in August of the ALMA Cycle-3 proposal review outcome to the PIs, the ALMA consortium has recently made available the list of high priority projects and a report on the proposal review process. While the former lists the A- and B-graded projects, along with the respective PI, co-Is, and abstract, the latter describes the review process along with interesting statistics (such as requested facility specifications, science categories interest, …).

We would like to highlight a milestone achieved by the Portuguese community via the acceptance (A-grade) of the proposal PI’ed by David Sobral (based at IA), focused on the recently discovered high-redshift galaxy with PopIII-like stellar populations. In addition, the Portuguese community is involved (in co-authorship) in six other high-priority and two filler (C-graded) proposals. We also highlight the proposal PI’ed by Elisabete da Cunha (based at Swinburne University, Australia) which was also considered to be of high priority via the very over-subscripted Open-Skies time.

We take the chance to call your attention to the recent ALMA status report and the results of the ALMA Cycle-3 user survey.

We hope these very successful results make you even more eager to apply for ALMA time in Cycle 4! We will be here to help you!

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!

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.