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.
The FCT Investigator programme aims to support the recruitment of outstanding researchers into Portugal’s R&D centres. Open to scientists of all nationalities, and across research fields, this highly competitive programme targets scientists with exceptional track-records and clear potential to develop innovative research. Close to 600 new FCT Investigators have been selected in the three previous calls. The 2015 call is expected to fund 200 new FCT Investigator grants. Deadline on 15th September 2015. Please, read further in the call webpage.
Also, note the deadline 2nd September 2015 to associate your project to our host institution, IA. More information regarding this here.
New ALMA Science Verification data has been released. This batch includes:
– M100: Band 3 CO(1-0) observations with the 7m Array and the Total Power Array, demonstrating the ALMA Compact Array and data combination capabilities;
– 3C 286: Band 6 continuum observations demonstrating ALMA’s polarization capability.
Should you need any help with these data, please use the Helpdesk or contact PACE directly.
Several new sets of “User Provided Data Products” (UPDPs) have recently been ingested in the Herschel Science Archive and are available for retrieval. The number of UPDPs served by the HSA is gradually increasing. The full list of available UPDPs at any time is available here.
Also, the “ALMA/Herschel Archival Workshop” presentations are now available online here.
In the ALMA Status Page, one can check current specifications of the array. Of great interest to DDT or ToO proposals is the information on the current and future configurations. Take a look!
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.
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.
The 2015 edition of the European Radio Interferometry School (ERIS) has just been announced. It will be held at ESO on September 6th to 10th. For further information, please visit the school webpage.
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.
The moment we have all waited for, the general public can now visit ALMA. From 29th March on, every Saturday and Sunday mornings, organised visits to the ALMA Operations Support Facility will take place. The visitor just needs to register in advance by completing and submitting the form available in the visits webpage.
