Welcome to the European ALMA Regional Centre Newsletter!
This Newsletter, which appears on a monthly basis, is a compilation of recent European ALMA Regional Centre announcements. In addition to these, the Newsletter provides an inside look into ALMA operations, showcases some of the exciting science carried out with ALMA by our European colleagues, and informs you about ALMA or ALMA-related meetings.
The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) will start Cycle 9 observations in October 2022. A Call for Proposals (CfP) with detailed information on Cycle 9 is anticipated to be issued in March 2022 and the deadline for proposal submission will be in April 2022. The purpose of this pre-announcement is to highlight aspects of the CfP to assist with early planning.
The ALMA Science Archive has a new functionality that will list the 20 most similar ALMA projects or publications to any projects you may be interested in. This is achieved with a sophisticated and state-of-the-art text-similarity algorithm.
The Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Czech ARC node are seeking a candidate for a Research associate – ARC node researcher/developer.
The successful applicant shall work on further development of the Solar ALMA Observing Mode. The research will be performed within the ESO ALMA Development Study “Towards High resolution Solar ALMA Images: Overcoming current ObsMode limitations”. More information about the vacancy, application, shortlisting and interviews can be found here. The closing date is 14 January 2022.
New talk series: ALMA Recounts of Cosmic Conundrums
The European ARC network is presenting the virtual talk series "ALMA recounts of Cosmic Conundrums". In every talk of this series a major astronomical question is discussed. The invited speaker will describe the context of the question and then focuses on the ALMA contribution to the field, past and future. The aim of the series is to highlight the unparalleled contribution of ALMA to the broader astronomical landscape and to provide an outlook towards the future.
The second talk of the series "ALMA recounts of cosmic conundrums" will take place January 12th at 14:00 CET and will be presented by Eva Schinnerer (MPIA), who will address the question: What is the coupling between molecular clouds, star formation and stellar feedback? The talk will be broadcast live on the youtube channel of the European ARC network.
The European ARC Network is preparing the next training events of the I-TRAIN series in 2022.
The organizing team would appreciate feedback from the user community. If you have any suggestions of topics to be covered in 2022, please send us an email!
Meet the ARC
Dr. Fabrizia Guglielmetti
Fabrizia joined the ESO ARC in February 2017. Involved in quality assurance and in pipeline testing, her roles at the ARC progressed from Pipeline Processing Analyst, to ARC scientist and deputy European Data Reduction Manager (DRM) to finally becoming the DRM lead. She has also been cognizant lead of the automated data reduction products workflow in operations.
Scientifically, Fabrizia's interests are focused on astrostatistics, multiwavelength research and authoring astrometric catalogues. She is engaged in popularizing Bayesian techniques (see Bayes Forum) to approach the big data challenges in astronomy through the employment of advanced algorithms capable to reach optimal decisions given a well-educated guess. Fabrizia is currently leading the internal ESO ALMA development study BRAIN in support of CASA imaging procedures.
ALMA science highlight
Accreting streamers induce shocks on planet-forming disks
Collage image of the HL Tau system, where the dusty disk is shown in red, the accreting streamers probed by CO and HCO+ is shown in blue, and the shock probed by SO and SO2 is shown in green.
Planet-forming disks are not isolated systems. Material from the surrounding medium can accrete on their surface so as to increase the mass budget available for the planet formation, provide chemically fresh ingredients to the disk atmosphere, and alter the local disk kinematics.
The variety of molecular lines observed within the ALMA-DOT program by Garufi et al. (2021) toward partly embedded young stars allowed the authors to characterize this process. Accreting streamers are probed by CO, CS, and HCO+ emission around four targets: DG Tau, HL Tau, IRAS 04302+2247, and T Tau. SO and SO2 emission is instead detected at the intersection between the streamer and the disk by Garufi et al. (2022) suggesting that it probes the shock induced by the accreting material. In the shock, the SO and SO2 molecules, otherwise coupled with dust grains, are released in the gas phase and become observable. The analysis of the velocity-weighted (moment-1) maps reveals that the velocity structure of the disk around HL Tau is altered by the impact of the streamer on the surface. This perturbation would only occur at the disk surface since the well-known map of the dust continuum emission does not show any azimuthal asymmetry. The detection of SO and SO2 emission protruding from the disk region impacted by the streamer down to the star is likely indicating that the released molecules have time to drift inward before any chemical reprocessing occurs in the disk.
The results by Garufi et al. (2022) reveal that accretion shocks in planet-forming disks can be probed by ALMA and could be common bearing significant implications on the chemical composition and mass content of disks.
The European ALMA Regional Centre Network is happy to announce a new series of events targeted toward early career astronomers interested in ALMA: the Meeting for ALMA Young Astronomers (MAYA). The first MAYA will take place on 2022 March 2nd to 4th and it will be fully on-line. Deadline for abstract submission is 2022 January 31st.
