The ALMA Science Helpdesk will be unavailable due to essential maintenance for two days starting October 9, 13:00 UT. During this time users and staff will not have access to their tickets and will be unable to create new tickets. Principle Investigators of Target of Opportunity programs who may want to trigger observations during this timeframe should contact their Contact Scientist prior to the downtime.

The ALMA Observatory announces five filler programs that have been approved on the main array by the ALMA director. The programs are designed to fill the gaps in the 12-m Array observing schedule at low frequencies in Configurations 8 and 9, based on input  from scientists at the Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) and the ALMA Regional Centers (ARCs). The proposed programs were reviewed by the Observatory Scientist and the Department of Science Operations head, and approved by the ALMA Director.

To reach the ambitious goal of the ALMA Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU) to quadruple the instantaneous bandwidth from 4 to 16 GHz a wide range of receiver components need to be upgraded including the junctions, the intermediate frequency (IF) hybrids and the Cryogenic Low Noise Amplifiers (CLNA). The latter component has a critical role, as its location early in the analogue part of the signal chain means it has a substantial contribution to the overall receiver noise and affects the quality of sideband separating receivers. Moreover, the IF bandwidth of the CLNA is often the limiting factor for the overall receiver bandwidth, making the CLNA one of the key components to upgrade for the WSU. The same CLNA can be installed in most upgraded receivers.

The European ARC Network invites users to an online training on Introduction to Data Combination on September 21^st, 11:00 CET [Zoom link].

A new development study, led by ASTRON in Dwingeloo (The Netherlands) will investigate the possibility of implementing initial processing steps of ALMA raw data from the correlator in a streaming process of the visibilities. This study builds synergies with the LOFAR and SKA telescopes, where similar processes will be applied by the software engineers at ASTRON. In particular, the Default PreProcessing Pipeline (DP3) is a modular framework that can be adapted to be used on ALMA data.

The European ARC CalMS service (https://almascience.eso.org/tools/eu-arc-network/the-european-arc-calms-service) will be unavailable from 17/08/2023 - 23/08/2023 and 16/10/2023 - 30/10/2023.

An international team of astronomers and engineers at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have made the first measurements using new receivers installed on multiple ALMA antennas. The receivers allow to observe within the final frequency range — with wavelengths between 2.6 to 4.5 millimeters (67-116 GHz) — for which it was designed. Band 2 opens a new window into our cosmic origins, allowing measurements that reveal how distant stars and galaxies form, all the way down to the origins of planets and the building blocks of life.  

The demand for the European ARC CalMS service (https://almascience.eso.org/tools/eu-arc-network/the-european-arc-calms-service) has been roughly constant since the beginning of 2023 at 100 MOUSs/month. The 3000th MOUS was served at the end of July 2023 (counting since January 2020). The service will continue as it is for the foreseeable future.