The nearby spiral galaxy NGC 4254, with molecular gas as observed by ALMA shown in red and orange tones.  Credit: ESO/PHANGS.
The nearby spiral galaxy NGC 4254, with molecular gas as observed by ALMA shown in red and orange tones. Credit: ESO/PHANGS.

 

Current Status of ALMA Services

At this point in time, several ALMA online services are still unavailable because of a cyberattack at the end of October. Here is the official statement from the Joint ALMA Observatory:

"Last Saturday, October 29, at 6:14 AM, the ALMA observatory in Chile suffered a cyberattack on its computer systems, forcing the suspension of astronomical observations and the public website. There are limited email services at the observatory. The threat has been contained, and our specialists are working hard to restore affected systems. The attack did not compromise the ALMA antennas or any scientific data. Given the nature of the episode, it is not yet possible to estimate a timeline for a return to regular activities. We are thankful for the support and understanding across the ALMA partnership and apologize for any inconveniences resulting from the recovery efforts."

"We regret any inconvenience or impact experienced by our ALMA users due to this situation. We will post updates on the Science Portal when new information becomes available regarding return of services and operations."

Note that the ALMA Portal on the ESO website and the ALMA Archive are both currently functional. Additionally, it is possible to contact ALMA via the ALMA Helpdesk, although any responses to Helpdesk tickets need to be sent through the Helpdesk interface and not via email.

 

Call for Proposals for Development Studies

Deadline: 24 January 2023

Website

ESO has announced a call for proposals for development studies for ALMA upgrades. The studies may cover any topic related to any topic, including advanced data products, although proposals focused on the priorities in the ALMA 2030 Development Roadmap, including proposals aimed at upgrades for the receivers and correlator, are encouraged.

Information on programmatic and contractual information regarding this call for proposals is available from this ESO webpage. The proposal submission package can also be requested from this webpage.

ESO is organizing an information meeting at ESO Headquarters (with the option to join remotely) on 7 December. People interested in joining this meeting should contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. before 28 November.

The deadline for proposal submission in 24 January. Any UK-based astronomers interested in submitting a proposal for this development study are strongly encouraged to contact the UK ARC Node for assistance.

 

Meeting of ALMA Young Astronomers (MAYA) 2023

6-10 March 2023

Virtual Workshop

Website

The Meeting of ALMA Young Astronomers (MAYA) series is aimed at early career astronomers working with ALMA data. The meeting will cover all ALMA-related science topics, including science based on data from any of ALMA’s observing modes.

MAYA 2023 will take place fully online. Undergraduate students, PhD students, and postdocs are welcome to register for the meeting and to submit talks. The deadline for registration, including abstract submission, is 15 January 2023.

 

UK ALMA 2023 Hybrid Workshop

20-22 February 2023

Alan Turing Building, The University of Manchester

Manchester, UK

Website

The dates for the UK ALMA 2023 Hybrid Workshop have now been set to 20-22 February. This workshop will provide an introduction to ALMA and instructions on how to work with data from the observatory and will include sessions on preparing proposals, downloading data from the ALMA archive, calibrating and imaging ALMA data, and using advanced ALMA-related tools.

The workshop will be held in a hybrid format, with participants having the option of either attending the workshop in person at the University of Manchester or joining online. While the workshop is aimed primarily at novice ALMA users, particularly from the United Kingdom, other users with higher levels of experience or from other locations are also welcome to attend.

If anyone is interested in participating, they can still contact us before 20 January through one of the methods listed below to express their interest in the workshop, although we have limited spaces left.

 

I-TRAIN 17: Introduction to tclean

25 November 2022 10:00 UTC

Meeting Link

The 17th training session in the I-TRAIN series will be on 25 November and will cover tclean, the CASA task used for imaging. This tutorial will cover the various options available for tclean and provide specific examples of continuum and line imaging. Some of the points of emphasis include the different deconvolution methods, automasking, tapering, and weighting options.

Participants interested in working with the examples are asked to install CASA 6.2 for this tutorial. This can be found on the CASA Download page under "Previous CASA releases.

More general information on I-TRAIN, including videos and transcripts of past sessions, can be found on the I-TRAIN website maintained by ESO.