ALMA is pleased to announce that, following the successful repairs of ALMA transporter Otto, antenna relocations towards completing Configuration 7 started on November 25. In order to catch up with the original configuration calendar announced at the start of Cycle 10, almost continuous antenna relocations are envisaged up until December 28. As a consequence, the first visits to Configurations 6, 5, 4 and 3 will be shorter than originally planned. However, these configurations will be revisited later in the cycle.

The European ARC Network invites users to an introduction to Very Long Baseline Interferometry with ALMA (Part I) on January 19th, 11:00 CET [Zoom].

The ALMA Director, Sean Dougherty, would like to share the following statement on observatory priorities during implementation of the Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU).

Allegro announces its first Joint ALMA + JWST Science Day, which will take place at Kapteyn Institute in Groningen on 30 January 2024. The Science Day aims to bring together members of The Netherlands astronomy community where we highlight the latest scientific results obtained with ALMA and JWST, with a particular emphasis on projects that make use of both. The meeting will also allow ample time to discuss user experiences and will have talks on news and updates for both ALMA and JWST. Registration for contributed talks is now open (registration form, deadline: 8 January 2024).

ALMA has released data acquired as part of the Extension and Optimization of Capabilities effort (EOC). The data were used to test, implement, and determine the accuracy of the solar full-polarization observing mode of ALMA. 

The data are available here (please refer to the readme file at each of these locations for information on the content of the files):

• Full Polarization data of a sunspot 

The Science Verification data for W51 observed on 25 March 2023 and 4 April 2023 are now available on the Science Portal. The data were obtained in the observations of spectral lines (CS, SiO, CH3OH, and SO2) and continuum in Band 1, with the total on-source time of about 70 minutes.

The European ARC Network invites users to an introduction to data visualisation using FRELLED, on December 8th, 11:00 CET [Zoom]. FRELLED is a new FITS viewer designed to explore 3D spectral line data and assist with visual source extraction and analysis, using the artistic software Blender.

The start of antenna relocations between configuration C-8 and C-7, originally scheduled for October 20th, will be delayed until at least November 10th.  Following recent inspections, it was found that both antenna transporters need urgent maintenance. ALMA has thus decided to take both transporters out of operation to proceed with the necessary repairs, to prevent a longer-term stoppage of antenna relocations. This situation will have an impact on the remaining Cycle 10 configuration calendar.  As far as possible, ALMA will take mitigation actions to ensure that the observing queue is populated. A further announcement will be posted on the Science Portal once the technical issues have been solved and the specific impact on the configuration schedule has been established. We regret any inconvenience or impact experienced by our ALMA users due to this issue. If you have any questions, or have comments or concerns, please contact your local ALMA Regional Centre via the ALMA Helpdesk at https://help.almascience.org/.