The first of the new APEX facility receivers has been successfully installed at the telescope in August 2018. This new band 9 facility receiver for SEPIA records both sidebands simultaneously, with very good sideband rejection at the level of >15 dB at all frequencies (>20 dB in most cases). To test these new capabilities with real scientific observations, all APEX partners are inviting short science verification (SV) proposals (nominally a few hours, with a maximum of 5 hours). 

The Nordic ALMA Regional Centre node is looking for two permanent staff scientists (Senior Research Engineers). The successful applicants will be members of the Nordic ARC node and will be involved in all the regular activities within the node, in particular quality assessment of ALMA data from Nordic projects, face-to-face user support, software tool development, contact scientist activities, and community training and outreach.

Deadline for applications is September 30, 2018.

We are very pleased to welcome Francisca Kemper to ESO as the European ALMA Programme Scientist. Ciska will join ESO on 1 November 2018, and will act as the primary contact between the ALMA Observatory, the ESO ALMA Support Centre and the European astronomical community with respect to the scientific capabilities, mission and exploitation of the ALMA facility.

ALMA is approaching completion of its originally envisaged capabilities and, within the first five years of operations, the original fundamental science goals of ALMA have been essentially achieved. The ALMA Board established a Working Group to develop a strategic vision and prioritize new capabilities for the Observatory out to 2030 as part of the ALMA Development Program. The ALMA Board approved the resulting ALMA Development Roadmap in November 2017.

The following document is a summary of the Roadmap, approved by the Board in June 2018 for broad distribution.

The second Netherlands ALMA Science Day will take place on Thursday November 1, 2018, at Leiden Observatory.

Allegro, the ARC node in the Netherlands, organizes this meeting for the Netherlands ALMA community to share their exciting new science, hear the latest news from the telescope, and discuss user experiences and ALMA-related topics. For those interested, the meeting will be followed by an ALMA data reduction training with CASA on Friday November 2 at Allegro.

You can register and find more details about the event in the following link or contact Allegro.

ESO has issued the final call for proposals to conduct Public Spectroscopic Surveys using the Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO) telescopes as part of an agreement with the University of Arizona. The deadline for submitting Public Survey proposals for ESO ARO time is 27 September 2018.

Workshop Announcement: TORUS 2018: The many face of AGN obscuration, Puerto Varas, Chile, 10-14 December 2018

Continuing the long tradition of international TORUS workshops, we announce TORUS2018 in Puerto Varas, Chile, to investigate the many faces of AGN obscuration. Considering the new theoretical and observational work carried out across the electromagnetic spectrum, the scientific goal of the workshop is to critically assess and challenge our current "common knowledge" and "widely accepted" torus picture. What do we really know for sure? What do we only think we know? And what is it that we do not know?

Workshop Announcement: AtLAST Science Workshop, Royal Observatory Edinburgh, September 10 - 13, 2018

As a followup to the AtLAST Technical workshop held at ESO in January 2018, the AtLAST organisers are pleased to announce a science case development workshop to be held at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh in September 2018.
Registration page https://goo.gl/forms/xP06LEhNZyfHwMhe2
Registration Deadline: July 1, 2018. Please contact the organizers if you missed the deadline and would still like to join.