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/. 

This is the first announcement of the workshop 'The promise and challenges of the ALMA Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade' to take place at ESO - Garching from June 24 to 28, 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. 

The aim of this workshop is to widely present the upgrade and engage the community by showcasing the science that will be enabled in the upcoming years. At the same time, we will also solicit input from the ALMA community that will be used to inform priorities during the commissioning phase. The call for abstract and registration will open on December 15.

The European ALMA Regional Centre network is organising the first European ALMA School that will be hosted by the UK ARC Node on 10 - 14 June 2024 in Manchester. This school is designed to provide training on a broad range of aspects related to ALMA, including interferometry, data calibration and imaging, the ALMA archive, analysis techniques, ALMA science, and future ALMA developments. For more details and registration please visit the meeting website: https://sites.google.com/view/eu-alma-school-2024. The deadline for registration is 31 December 2023.

A new development study, led by the Nederlandse Onderzoekschool Voor Astronomie (NOVA) in Groningen, aims to produce a refurbished ALMA Band 9 cold cartridge receiver compatible with the ALMA Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU) requirements. The study will improve several key components. First, the receiver will be upgraded from a double sideband (DSB) to a sideband separating (2SB) configuration to improve sensitivity by suppressing image sideband sky noise. This requires a much more complicated mixer assembly, as well as a doubling of the number of SIS mixer devices and new cryogenic low-noise IF amplifiers. Second, the IF bandwidth will be extended, aiming for the WSU goal of 16 GHz per sideband. Third, the polarization performance will be improved either by improving the alignment of the existing grids or by the implementation of an orthomode transducer.