The European ARC Network invites users to an introduction to the ALMA Observing Tool on April 11th, 11:00 CEST [Zoom].

In the coming months, the Nordic ARC node is organising two events for their ALMA user community:

- Thursday April 4, 10:00 h, Proposal Preparation Day

- Wednesday June 5: Nordic ALMA Day

This is a reminder that the deadline for abstract submission [https://www.eso.org/sci/meetings/2024/wsu/abstract/submission-open.html] for contributed talks on the 1st of March 2024 is approaching.  

As previously announced, the workshop 'The promise and challenges of the ALMA Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade' will take place at ESO - Garching from the 24^th to the 28^th of June, 2024. This upgrade constitutes the top priority of the ALMA 2030 roadmap. It consists of an increase of the instantaneous spectral bandwidth by as much as a factor of four, while retaining full spectral resolution over the entire bandwidth, thus resulting in increases of the spectral scan speed up to a factor of 50 for the highest spectral resolution. In addition, an upgrade of the full signal chain of ALMA — from the receivers and digitizers, all the way through to the correlated data — will result in increases in sensitivity for all observations. A description of the WSU technical capabilities and the science case motivating the upgrade and is available at Carpenter et al. 2022 [https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.00195].

The next Call for Proposals for observing time with ALMA (Cycle 11) will be issued in late March 2023. The deadline for proposals is expected to be on 25 April 2024, with observations starting in October 2024. As a kick-off into the proposal preparation season, the German ARC node cordially invites its community to gather for the German ALMA Community Day in Bonn on 25 March 2024.

Over the past 10 observational cycles, the ALMA Science Archive (ASA) has amassed an enormous volume of data. This extensive collection stands as a promising resource to the continual growth of archival science. With over 1.8PB of accumulated data and nearly 70,000 observations, the ASA now boasts extensive sky coverage in capturing a vast number of research topics (Fig. 1), offering researchers unparalleled opportunities for archival science. The worldwide astronomy community has an ever-growing opportunity to leverage ALMA's extensive archive for their research. Notably, 13% of all publications in Nature involve the use of archival data, with 9% relying exclusively on such data.

As we celebrate 10 years since the inauguration of ALMA we are looking for the next Head of the European ALMA Regional Centre (ARC) to build upon our catalogue of success. You will be the face of ALMA Science Operations in Europe and be an active member of the ALMA global middle management team. With significant challenges in 2024 and beyond you will also play an integral role in the planning for the Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU) and helping to drive the strategy for the ESO ALMA Support Centre Division. You will be key in ALMA's continuing success.

IRAM would like to draw your attention to the three open positions of the astronomy group amongst which two are fixed-term to permanent & permanent.

All three astronomy job offers are on-line on the IRAM web and AAS Job Register.

The European ARC Network invites users to an introduction to the eXtended CASA Line Analysis Software Suite (XCLASS) on February 16th, 11:00 CET [Zoom].