Cycle 12 Starting on 01 October
Cycle 11 will end on 30 September with Cycle 12 starting on 01 October. A total of 1640 proposals were received for Cycle 12, with 211 proposals ranked either A or B. We congratulate those PIs who have earned observing time in the next cycle.
While the Phase 2 observing preparation process (where the Science Goals in the submitted proposals are converted into Scheduling Blocks) is automated, we still encourage observers to check their submitted programs carefully to ensure that the target coordinates and frequencies (or redshifts/velocities) still match what they need for their programs. If any corrections need to be made, please contact us via the Helpdesk.
Tom Williams to start work at the UK ARC Node
Tom Williams has just started work as a contact scientist at the UK ARC Node. Tom received his PhD from Cardiff in 2019 under the supervision of Walter Gear and Matt Smith. Since then, he has completed two postdoctoral positions, the first at MPIA working with Eva Schinnerer and the PHANGS collaboration and the second in Oxford with Martin Bureau and the WISDOM team.
Tom's research focuses on the Baryon lifecycle, exploring where and how efficiently gas transforms into stars. He makes use of multiple facilities, most notably ALMA, VLT-MUSE and the JWST, where he led development of an imaging pipeline for the PHANGS-JWST Treasury programmes. More recently, he has been working on decomposing complex data cubes by modelling multiple distinct components along the line-of-sight, and he hopes to apply this to new and exciting data from ALMA as well as Local Group galaxies observed with the VLA.
Registration Open for 2026 European ALMA School
26-30 January 2026
Leiden Observatory
Leiden, Netherlands
Website
Registration (deadline: 31 October 2025)
The biannual European ALMA Schools have been set up to provide a series of instructional sessions oriented towards novice and intermediate ALMA users. These sessions cover such topics such as introductory interferometry, data calibration, synthesis imaging, the ALMA Science Archive, analysis techniques, and future ALMA developments.
Registration is now open for the 2026 European ALMA School, which will be hosted by the Allegro ARC Node at Leiden University. People interested in participating can sign up via this link. The deadline for registration is 31 October. Note that participation will be limited to a total of 70 participants and that participants will need to pay a nominal registration fee of €75.
CARTA 5.0 Released
Version 5.0 of the next-generation imaging tool CARTA has now been released. The new version includes several new features, including channel map view mode (which simultaneously displays multiple slices of an image cube), multi-colour image blending, HiPS2FITS online image querying, and dynamic layouts. This new version of CASA is available via the CARTA download page for both Mac and Linux. See the CARTA website for more information about this release and plans for future releases.
UK ALMA Regional Centre Support Information and Contact Details
The UK ALMA Regional Centre Node is available to provide support to people working with or interested in working with ALMA. This may include help with preparatory data analysis, including the use of archival data, proposal and observing preparation, data calibration and imaging, and subsequent data analyses. We can also provide computing facilities for ALMA data processing and training for individuals or groups of people.
If you have any ALMA science results that they want to share with the UK ALMA community, please contact us, and we will endeavour to include those results in our next newsletter and on our website.
For any ALMA-related queries or support requests, please contact the UK ARC Node via the following:
ALMA Helpdesk: help.almascience.org
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.