The University of Manchester
Manchester, United Kingdom
Overview
ALMA is starting to undergo a major upgrade which will significantly enhance the telescope's capabilities. This upgrade, named the Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU), will have significant impacts on the way users set up ALMA projects. However, the implementation of the WSU will affect ALMA's capabilities during several observing cycles before full WSU operations are achieved. The first of these changes to directly impact users will likely happen in ALMA Cycle 13, which currently has a proposal submission deadline of 23 April 2026. The current expectations are that, in Cycle 13, proposers will be required to use the new WSU proposal submission tool, the next generation Observing Tool (ngOT). Also, Cycle 13 will provide users with access to the first of the new WSU-compliant receiver bands, ALMA Band 2.
This UK ARC Node workshop will comprise two parts. The first part on 23-24 March will provide an introduction to ALMA and working with ALMA data, suitable for new or less experienced ALMA users. The second part on 25 March will cover essential information for all ALMA users and will include the planned current and future upgrade of ALMA, its impact on users, and the new proposal submission tool. The schedule and planned presentations are listed below.
Schedule
(All times are given in GMT.)
Monday, 23 March (Introductory Sessions Day 1)
| 10:00 | Welcome and Introductions |
| 10:30 | Introduction to ALMA |
| 11:00 | Break |
| 11:30 | Introduction to Interferometry |
| 12:00 | The Observing Support Tool (the online ALMA simulation tool) |
| 12:30 | Lunch |
| 14:00 | The ALMA Science Archive |
| 15:00 | Working with Downloaded Data |
| 15:30 | Break |
| 16:00 | Working with Downloaded Data (continued) |
| 17:00 | End |
Tuesday, 24 March (Introductory Sessions Day 2)
| 10:00 | CARTA (the image viewer designed for interferometric data) |
| 11:00 | Break |
| 11:30 | Imaging tutorial |
| 12:30 | Lunch |
| 14:00 | Imaging tutorial (continued) |
| 15:30 | Break |
| 16:00 | Imaging tutorial (continued) |
| 17:00 | End |
Wednesday, 25 March (Advanced Sessions)
| 10:00 | Welcome and Introductions |
| 10:05 | The Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU) |
| 10:50 | Break |
| 11:00 | ALMA Band 2 |
| 11:30 | Beyond the ALMA WSU: Millimetre/sub-millimetre interferometry in the 2040s (ALMA2040) |
| 12:15 | General discussion |
| 12:30 | Lunch |
| 13:30 | The Next Generation Observing Tool (the new web interface for submitting proposals) |
| 15:00 | End |
Pre-Workshop Downloads
UK ARC Node staff are available to help with the installation of CASA, CARTA, and any other software needed for the workshop. We will be contacting participants before the workshop to set up Zoom calls to help with the software installation.
CASA (ALMA Pipeline Version)
To work on the data calibration, imaging, and analysis activities, the ALMA pipeline version of CASA is required, as this contains many tools and tasks that are not packaged in the non-pipeline version but that are needed for the tutorials in the workshop. We strongly recommend that you install CASA 6.6.6, as we have verified that this works with the example dataset that we will use for the workshop.
CASA is available for both Linux and Mac OS. While it is not supported for Windows, it will work in WSL.
We encourage participants to test that CASA runs correctly in pipeline mode ahead of the workshop. This can be done as follows (please ensure that the appropriate path to CASA is given in each case):
- Linux (including WSL in Windows):: On the command line, run
~/casa-6.6.6-17-pipeline-2025.1.0.35/bin/casa --pipeline - Mac:: On the command line, run
~/CASA_PL_6.6.6.app/Contents/MacOS/casa --pipeline
If successful, a CASA IPython session should open with some print statements including:
INFO: Loaded Pipeline commands from package: h
INFO: Loaded Pipeline commands from package: hif
INFO: Loaded Pipeline commands from package: hifa
If these statements are not visible or an error message is displayed saying that pipeline mode could not be initialised, please ask us for assistance.
A note for Mac OS users
When opening CASA for the first time, the system may indicate that it cannot verify the software and will block it. A workaround is to go into System settings > Privacy & Security > Security, where there will be a warning that CASA was blocked > Click ‘Open Anyway’. This is only required once, and CASA should open as normal in future.
Additionally, the CASA Viewer no longer launches on Mac OS 13 and 14 machines that run on ARM (i.e. M1, M2, etc.) chips (see here for more details). This is not a problem for image visualisation (see CARTA details below), but it does mean that interactive image cleaning using tclean is not possible on these systems. The CASA team has developed a standalone package for interactive cleaning, which resolves this issue.
CARTA
CARTA is a new image viewer created for use with CASA images, and this viewer will be used frequently during the workshop. The downloads are available from the CARTA Installation page. In general, participants should just use one of the versions of the stand-alone package for this workshop.
- Linux: Most users should select the x86_64 version of the stand-alone package (which should work on most systems), although an AArch64 version of the package is also available.
- Mac: Users should select either the Intel Mac or Apple Silicon Mac stand-alone packages.
- Windows: CARTA is unavailable for Windows, although the Linux version will work in WSL.