The anticipated configuration schedule for Cycle 5 has been modified from that posted in the Proposer's Guide and the updated schedule is available at the following link: https://almascience.eso.org/news/observing/observing-configuration-schedule. The changes were made to optimise the schedule in response to the pressure from the top-rated proposals in Cycle 5 and the adverse weather at the ALMA site, which affected the configuration schedule at the end of Cycle 4. The most significant change is that Cycle 5 will begin in the configuration C43-10 instead of C43-7, and then move to more compact configurations.

During the last week of September the staff working in all the European ARC nodes had their yearly meeting in Den Dolder (NL) hosted by the Allegro node.

This yearly meeting brings together all the expertise in the network, in a unique occasion that allows us to share our experiences, strengthen our links and discuss past, present and future developments. 

We all are looking forward to our next meeting that will be organised by our colleagues at the Czech ARC node.

Submillimetre/mm/cm QUESO Workshop 2017:
Centimetre-Sub-Millimetre Q&U (and V) European Southern Observatory Workshop
ESO Garching, 25 – 27 October 2017

The workshop will cover diverse topics spanning interferometric and single dish cm/mm/submm polarisation observations, instrumentation for polarisation, calibration of the Q,U,&V Stokes components, CMB foregrounds and measurements, star formation, AGN jet polarisation, polarisation from evolved stars, and advanced analysis and modelling of the polarised signal.

The deadline for abstract submission is Sept. 4th, and the final registration deadline is Sept. 30th. Our website can be found here: https://www.eso.org/sci/meetings/2017/QUESO2017.html. The link for registration is here: https://www.eso.org/sci/meetings/2017/QUESO2017/registration/registration-open.html

Following a competitive selection process, the ALMA Board has appointed Sean Dougherty to lead the Observatory as the new ALMA Director for 5 years, starting in April 2018.

Sean Dougherty is currently Director of the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, Canada’s national radio astronomy facility, which is run by NRC Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics.  He has served as a member of the ALMA Board representing North America for 4 years and was the chair of the ALMA Budget Committee for the last 2 years.

Workshop to discuss science/technical aspects of AtLAST
ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 17-19 January 2018

ESO is co-organizing in early 2018 a workshop on the scientific merit for – and technical implementation of – an Atacama Large Aperture Submm/mm Telescope (AtLAST). The workshop will be a crucial forum to collect insights and feedback, and commit to a single vision for realising a single dish facility. The program will cover aspects of the science case driving the telescope and instrument requirements as well as potential telescope concepts.

The ALMA Observatory has experienced severe winter storms, making it difficult to recover the 12-metre array for Principal Investigator (PI) observations. This has had an even more detrimental impact on the relocation to long baselines. Routine observations utilising the 7-m and Total Power Arrays are ongoing and clearance work is continuing to enable 12-metre array PI science and reconfigure to the longest baselines. An update regarding the revised configuration schedule will be released in the coming weeks; see the ALMA News for more detail.

198 proposals requesting 4815 hours of observing time on the ALMA 7-metre Array were received in response to the Cycle 4 Supplemental Call for Proposals. A total of 32 proposals requesting 716 hours were accepted and added to the 7-metre Array observing queue for the remainder of Cycle 4. See the report for further details.

RadioNet is a consortium of 28 institutions in Europe, the Republic of Korea and South Africa, integrating at European level world-class infrastructures for research in radio astronomy. RadioNet has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730562, in order to perform a comprehensive, innovative and ambitious suite of actions that fosters a sustainable research environment.

The deadline for applications for financial support is 1 July 2017.