Concluded on 25th of November at lunchtime the workshop ‘Exploiting Archives for Radio Astronomy in the SKA-era‘ gathered together about 70 participants spanning a wide range of nationalities, from the USA to Korea, passing from India. Most of the participants were from Europe, with more than 30% of women participants.
The goals of the workshop were to give an overview of the capabilities, development, and user support for archival research in the main worldwide radio facilities. In particular, invited speakers involved in archival research and tool developments within the European VLBI Network (EVN), the Low-Frequency Array LOFAR, the enhanced Multi-Element Remotely Linked Interferometer Network (e-MERLIN), and the Advanced European Network of E-infrastructures for Astronomy with the SKA (AENEAS), have illustrated the state of the art of the current database, showing the tools available in each web-platform to retrieve and analyse the data.
The workshop has been useful and timely. It clarified to the scientific community the challenge that will afford the different radio facilities in terms of archive, data mining, and advanced products in the era of ‘Big Data’ Science.
RadioNet had granted this event, but due to COVID-19, the conference was modified and changed to an online format.
Below a picture.
PACE Members attended the EAS virtual meeting planned in Leiden from 29th June to the 3rd of July and moved to a virtual conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In particular, António Dias and Israel Matute presented the project “Better science through an enhanced user interface with the ALMA Archive” in the special session 13: “Eight years of ALMA ground-breaking results: A joint venture between the ALMA user community and the ALMA Regional Centres”.
In the first week of November, PACE participated in the annual meeting of the European ALMA Network, hosted this year by the German ARC Node of Bonn. With the magnificent view of the Rhine valley in Konigswinter, representatives of different European Institutions discussed the status and future plans for ALMA development. After the successful ALMA meeting in Cagliari and with new ideas in mind, the meeting has planned future development for ALMA up to 2030, assuring its role at the forefront of astronomical research.
PACE Members attended the IAU Symposium “Uncovering early galaxy evolution in the ALMA and JWST era”, hosted in Viana do Castelo, Portugal, from 3-7 June 2019.
This symposium brought together community of theoretical and observational experts to discuss how we can make the most of ALMA and JWST synergies in advancing our understanding of galaxy evolution in the young Universe during the next decade.
PACE members presented various posters, fostering the discussion about possible synergies between ALMA and future facilities in construction or soon available for the scientific community.
PACE member participated in the Polarization Workshop, held in Garching in the last week of May. Experts from the European ALMA Regional Center Network meet at ESO to discuss and improve the procedure to validate ALMA data observed in full polarization mode, a challenging observing technique offered by the ALMA observatory in the past Cycles. The workshop will trigger a more efficient and thorough analysis for such type of data, increasing the more and more the scientific impact of ALMA in the field of Observational Astrophysics.
Workshop participants discussing about polarization during the social dinner.
On the second week of May ended the 9th SKA Pathfinder Radio Continuum Survey Group (SPARCS) meeting, which took place in Lisbon, between the 6th and 10th May 2019.
The aim of the meeting was to coordinate developments of techniques for radio data analysis and to help in the choice of area, depth, location on the sky, and other parameters, future and ongoing surveys. PACE members have been heavily involved in the meeting, participating in the discussion, and presenting their results.
On the last week of September, PACE participated to the annual meeting of the European ALMA Network, hosted this year by the Czech ARC Node. In the beautiful landscape of Prague countryside, representatives of different European Institutions discussed the status and future plans for ALMA development. With new facilities starting soon their operations, these meetings aim to assure for ALMA a future at the forefront of astronomical research for the next decades.
The annual European meeting of the ARC nodes and CoE this year will be held in the Costa de Caparica Hotel.
More than 50 scientists from the different ALMA nodes in Europe will attend this meeting to discuss the strategic lines for the future of ALMA, and the technical improvements of the official data reduction pipeline of the instrument.
The Portuguese Alma Center of Expertise (PACE) will guest the event in collaboration with the ESO-ALMA Headquarter of Garching.
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.
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.
