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 European ARC network presents a series of 3-min videos to introduce and explain ALMA and basic interferometry principles to non-experts. The videos have been prepared by experts from the ESO and the ARC nodes in Europe.
The nodes in the European ARC network offer continuous support to their communities through virtual and real-life activities. These include, among others, face-to-face user support, computational support, proposal preparation training, data reduction workshops, science days and workshops. The easiest way to stay fully up-to-date with the activities and support provided by every node, as well as other ALMA updates relevant to your local community, is to sign up to the newsletter or mailing list of your local node. For more information on how to sign up click on "Read more".
Jupyter Notebooks have been added to the ALMA Science Portal which give you an introduction and overview on how to easily query the ALMA Science Archive with Python and then potentially download ALMA data.
All objects from Simbad and NED which fall into any of the regions observed with ALMA will now show up as round markers in the ALMA Science Archive query form at high zoom levels. What is more, the main search now contains a search field "Object type" where you can search for all objects in Simbad and/or NED and get only the ALMA observations returned that contain objects of the selected type(s).
The UK ARC Node at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics invites applications for a research associate position to work as a support astronomer for UK users of ALMA. The closing date is 15 December 2021.
New talk series: ALMA Recounts of Cosmic Conundrums
The European ARC network is launching the new 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 first talk of the series "ALMA recounts of cosmic conundrums" will take place December 1st at 14:00 CET and will be presented by Leen Decin (KU Leuven), who will address the question: How does dust enrichment around evolved stars work? The talk will be broadcasted live on the youtube channel of the European ARC network.
The European ARC Network invites you to the last appointment of the year of the online training series I-TRAIN, which will be:
STATCONT, for statistical continuum determination - 10th December 2021
You can find further details on this session below. You can access or subscribe to the calendar of sessions at [calendar URL][iCal address].
Please contact us by submitting a ticket to the ALMA HelpDesk (Department "General Queries") if you wish to provide your feedback on I-TRAIN. Information on the I-TRAIN sessions, including legacy materials and links to YouTube videos from previous sessions, are available in the Science Portal.
The European ARC Network invites users to an online training on how to determine the continuum level in astronomical sources on December 10, 11:00 CET [Zoom link].
Gary is Professor of Astrophysics at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester and he is the PI of the UK ALMA Regional Centre Node which is funded by STFC. As PI he is responsible for the funding of the ARC Node as well as overseeing the operation of the node and directing its activities. Gary also co-leads the Advanced Radio Instrumentation Group in Manchester, a cross-department research group that develops high-frequency low noise amplifiers and receivers for radio astronomy.
Gary's main research interests are in galactic star formation and astrochemistry. Currently, as well as studying the evolution of a sample of young massive protostars using ALMA, he is heavily involved in the ALMAGAL Large Program as well as studying the role of magnetic fields in infrared dark clouds.
Dr. Evanthia Hatziminaoglou
Evanthia joined the ESO ARC in early 2012. In these ten years she has had several roles within the ARC and the European ARC network, such as the European ALMA Helpdesk administrator for a number of years and a member of the Phase 2 group since Cycle 0. She was the ARC network coordinator from 2014 to 2019, when she took the role of the deputy head of the ARC at ESO.
Evanthia's research interests are active galactic nuclei (AGN) and the way they affect the evolution of their host galaxies. She has led AGN studies based on proprietary and archival data from Space Observatories like Spitzer and Herschel and from ground-based facilities like ALMA. Evanthia is an active science communicator targeting a multitude of audiences spanning from primary school and high school pupils and teachers to university student associations to the general public, in various languages.
ALMA science highlight
The Rise of Dust-Obscured Galaxies in the Epoch of Reionization
Two heavily dust-obscured galaxies are serendipitously detected at z~7 by the REBELS ALMA Large program (Panels with red frames), showing [CII] 158um emission lines and dust continuum from where the rest-UV emission is completely absent.
Heavily dust-obscured galaxies exist even in the early Universe. However, in the epoch of reionization (EoR; z>6), it is still completely unknown how much they contribute to the overall star-formation activity of the Universe. In a recent science paper, Fudamoto et al. (2021) present the serendipitous discovery of heavily dust-obscured normal star-forming galaxies at z~7, hitherto completely missed from our knowledge during the cosmic reionization. Among 40 ultraviolet (UV) bright high-redshift galaxies observed by the REBELS ALMA Large Program, two bright [CII] 158um emission lines and dust continuum are serendipitously detected as companion galaxies of the main REBELS targets. These newly found galaxies are absent in deep rest-UV images as they are completely dust-obscured. Surprisingly, their infrared luminosity and [CII] emission lines suggest that they are consistent with normal main-sequence galaxies at z~7, suggesting that these dust-obscured galaxies might be much more numerous than previously known.
This recent discovery suggests that our current census of star-forming galaxies in the EoR is highly incomplete, and that galaxy formation theory may require significant revisions. Wide-field and deep surveys are required to investigate their accurate number density to investigate galaxy formation and evolution, hidden behind dust in the early Universe.
Allegro is pleased to announce that on 29thNovember the 5th Allegro Science Day will take place at Leiden University.
At the Science Day, the latest scientific results obtained with ALMA will be shared by the Netherlands astronomical community. Guest speakers this year will include Alice Booth (Leiden University) and Eva Schinnerer (MPIA Heidelberg), and the meeting will allow ample time to discuss user experience and other ALMA related topics. The meeting is expected to be in person; should the covid-19 regulations change, they will fall back to an online format.
Following the Science Day, on Tuesday, November 30, 2021, Allegro will also host an introductory CASA training, which is also planned to be in-person. Allegro fellows will introduce CASA and ALMA data reduction, share tips & tricks, and offer extensive hands-on training in data imaging and analysis. For more information, and for registration, please visit this website.
