Welcome to the European ALMA Regional Centre Newsletter!
This monthly newsletter is a compilation of recent European ALMA Regional Centre news and announcements, showcasing an exciting ALMA science result by European colleagues. Every month, you can learn an interesting ALMA fact in "Did you know" and give your opinion about a particular ALMA matter in the "Poll of the month".
The Band 2 receiver project, led by ESO, has successfully concluded the pre-production phase. Full integration of the receivers will begin by November.
A detailed report on the outcome of the ALMA Cycle 11 Proposal Review Process is now available. The report details the proposal review process, proposal statistics and regional distributions, as well as the proposal distribution across science categories and receiver bands.
For the first time, astronomers have captured images of a star other than the Sun in enough detail to track the motion of bubbling gas on its surface. The images of the star, R Doradus, were obtained with ALMA in July and August 2023. They show giant, hot bubbles of gas, 75 times the size of the Sun, appearing on the surface and sinking back into the star's interior faster than expected.
Enrique joined the ESO ARC in November 2021 as an ARC Astronomer, after having been an ALMA/ESO Fellow at the JAO in Chile. As an ARC Astronomer he contributed to Quality Assurance, Helpdesk, the Proposal Handling Team, and WSU-related projects.
On September 1st, he was appointed as the new European ARC Manager. As part of this role, he also serves as the European member in ALMA's Integrated Science Operations Team.
Enrique's research is mainly focused on the characterization of the dust content in protoplanetary disks. He is also interested in protoplanetary disk evolution and dispersal. For his research he makes use of (sub-)millimeter and centimeter observations taken with ALMA and VLA.
ALMA science highlight
ALMACAL: A Broader and Deeper View of the Universe
a. The sky distribution of ALMA calibrators observed since Cycle 1. The extensive area coverage minimises the effects of cosmic variance, a major source of uncertainty in previous studies.
b. An example of an untargeted CO emission line found in a calibrator field. These data probe how molecular gas, a key ingredient in star formation, evolves over different redshifts. ALMACAL's wide sky coverage provides a more representative view of molecular gas distribution, significantly reducing the impact of cosmic variance.
c. An example of extended structures from AGN jets associated with an ALMA calibrator observed in ALMA band 6 (also 3 and 4). These observations offer detailed insights into how AGN jets interact with the interstellar medium, influencing star formation and gas dynamics in the host galaxy and providing new perspectives on AGN feedback mechanisms.
Every ALMA observing project spends a few minutes observing a calibrator source. ALMACAL-22 is an extensive dataset derived from these reprocessed calibration data. ALMACAL-22 covers 1047 calibrator fields across the southern sky with over 2000 hours of accumulated observations, spanning ALMA Bands 3 to 10. Previous ALMACAL studies have made important advances in our understanding of molecular gas evolution, dusty star-forming galaxies, extragalactic absorption lines, and the physics of active galactic nuclei (AGN). This new extended version allows for deeper exploration and more statistically robust analyses, significantly reducing uncertainties such as cosmic variance and small sample sizes (a).
Two notable scientific cases studied by ALMACAL are CO emission line surveys and AGN jets, offering key insights into molecular gas evolution and AGN physics. In the case of CO emission lines (b), a pilot survey showed that untargeted searches in calibrator fields can yield reliable estimates of molecular gas evolution. With ALMACAL-22, the survey volume for CO emission has increased tenfold, allowing for an even more comprehensive analysis. For AGN jets (c), earlier studies examined the variability and structure of jets from calibrators, particularly blazars. New observations have revealed large-scale jet structures across multiple ALMA bands, illustrating how these jets interact with surrounding gas and potentially affect star formation in the host galaxy, contributing to the understanding of AGN feedback mechanisms.
Results from August's poll, "What are you most looking forward to from ALMA's Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade?"
Did you know?
The European ARC Network organizes I-TRAIN, a regular series of Interactive Training in Reduction and Analysis of INterferometric data. The sessions aim to help ALMA users gain expertise in working with interferometric data, such as self-calibration, u-v model fitting, and data combination. You can view previous I-TRAIN sessions here.
If you would like to contribute an ALMA science highlight, please contact the newsletter editor at Hannah.Stacey@eso.org.