The European ALMA Regional Centre invites European ALMA users to a virtual community assembly on March 24 at 11:00 CET, in connection with the Cycle 9 call for proposals. At this meeting, we will update you on the current and upcoming observing cycles and on the support from the European ARC network. In the dedicated Q&A session you will have the opportunity to ask your questions. The meeting can be accessed at this link.

Also in 2022, as in previous years, ALMA is in shut-down mode during the month of February. This period is used for maintenance purposes and operations are expected to restart on 1 March 2022. More information about the configuration schedule can be found on the ALMA Science Portal.

The UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC) is looking for an experienced astronomer/software engineer to join the ALMA software development team. The initial role will be to join the international teams designing and implementing software for the ALMA data processing pipeline and the ALMA Observing Tool. The deadline is on 20 March 2022 and more information can be found at the UK ATC recruiting page.

The Additional Representative Images for Legacy (ARI-L) ALMA development project has already delivered to the ALMA Science Archive (ASA) 132100 complete images. These are continuum images and cubes at native resolution for all targets and calibrators of more than 2300 Cycle 2, 3 and 4 datasets. This correspond to more than 70% of the datasets of those cycles processable with the ALMA imaging pipeline. The ARI-L image products can be retrieved from the ASA as "Externally delivered products" on the Request Handler download page directly listed below the ALMA data.

The ALMA Science Archive now features fully interactive previews (zoom & pan) which can be accessed directly from the result table of the ALMA Science Archive interface. For each spectral window, the main FITS file is identified and its preview displayed, if available. The previews show the continuum image, the peak-flux (also called moment 8 image), and - if strong lines exist - the moment 0 and moment 1 image of the strongest line.

The next call for ESO ALMA development studies is expected to be announced in November 2022, with a provisional deadline in January 2023. In this call, ESO will solicit proposals for external development studies to upgrade a broad range of ALMA systems. Studies that follow the scientific priorities outlined in the ALMA 2030 roadmap are particularly encouraged, such as upgrades of the IF bandwidth by a factor up to 4 compared to the current system.

QA0+ results are now available for PIs from SnooPI in the QA0 report, which can be found in the Scheduling Blocks (SB) detailed view.

QA0+ is one of the stages of Quality Assurance (QA) which runs a simplified and rapid scripted calibration and imaging pipeline of the channel-averaged data, producing continuum-only images of the science target, phase calibrator, and check source.

The phased ALMA array is expected to participate in Global mm-VLBI Array (GMVA) observations during ALMA Cycle 9 (October 2022 - September 2023). An introduction to the GMVA+ALMA observing mode including a link to all current capabilities and restrictions is available here. 

Any GMVA+ALMA proposal must be submitted to the GMVA before the GMVA deadline on 01 February 2022. In addition, a separate proposal must be submitted to ALMA by the deadline on 21 April 2022.