ALMA Update

 

1. ALMA Construction Status

 

ALMA construction is ramping down. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) accepted the 66th and final antenna from the contractor on September 23, 2013. The final cartridges for Band 4 (2mm) and Band 8 (.6mm) will be delivered by the end of the year; the final cartridges for Band 10 (.35mm) will be delivered in January, 2014. The final work on the antenna stations with baselines longer than 500 m will be completed within the next weeks. The four nutators, which are being deployed on the total power antennas of the Atacama Compact Array (ACA), were accepted by the JAO on September 24. Nutator verification is in progress at the Operations Support Facility (OSF) as the final antennas are prepared for delivery to the Array Operations Site (AOS). There are currently 60 antennas at the AOS. The estimated final delivery of the 66th and final outfitted antenna to AOS will occur in January 2014.

 

2.  ALMA Cycle 2 Call for Proposals

 

The ALMA Cycle 2 proposal deadline was December 5, 2013. In total, ALMA received 1382  proposals in Cycle 2, a 22% increase over Cycle 1, with 7314 hours requested for the 12 m array and 3327 hours requested for the ACA. There were 1049 different PIs and 3408 proposers (PIs and Co-Is) involved in the submitted proposals. The fraction of proposals submitted was 30% North America, 41% Europe, 20% East Asia, 7% Chile, and 3% from outside the ALMA partnershop; this is similar to the distribution in previous proposal rounds.

The ALMA archive did not encounter any problems ingesting the large number of proposals despite the rapid increase in submission rate as a function of time; 11% of all proposals were submitted in the final hour, and there were nearly 600 re-submissions in the final three hours. It is anticipated that about 2000 hours of 12 m Array time and a similar amount of ACA time will be available to be used for  Cycle 2 projects plus the high priority projects transferred from Cycle 1.

The Cycle 2 proposals have been preliminarily sorted and sent out to members of the review panels, which will meet 10-14 March 2014 in London, Ontario. Results of the final proposal ranking are expected in April 2014.

 

3. New ALMA papers since my last update

 

Here is a summary of the ALMA papers that have been published in the last three months. By my count, there are now at least 73 refereed papers published using ALMA data, either Cycle 0 data or Science Verification data.

 

  1. Rosenfeld et al. 2013, “Fast Radial Flows in Transition Disk Holes”, ApJ, in press
  2. Smail et al. 2013, “The SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey: Ultraluminous star-forming galaxies in a z=1.6 cluster”, ApJ, in press
  3. Bruderer et al. 2013, “,Gas structure inside dust cavities of transition disks: Oph IRS 48 observed by ALMA”, A&A, in press
  4. Hunt et al. 2013, ”ALMA observations of cool dust in a low-metallicity starburst, SBS0335-052”, A&A, in press
  5. Michalowski et al. 2013, “Spatially-resolved dust properties of the GRB 980425 host galaxy”, A&A, in press
  6. Decarli et al. 2013, “An ALMA survey of sub-millimeter galaxies in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: Sub-millimeter properties of color-selected galaxies”, ApJ, in press
  7. Jorgensen et al. 2013, “A Recent Accretion Burst in the Low-mass Protostar IRAS 15398-3359: ALMA Imaging of Its Related Chemistry”, ApJ, 779, L22
  8. Tan et al. 2013, “The Dynamics of Massive Starless Cores with ALMA”, ApJ, 779, 96
  9. Cernicharo et al. 2013, “Unveiling the Dust Nucleation Zone of IRC+10216 with ALMA”, ApJ, 778, L25
  10. Wang et al. 2013, “An ALMA Survey of Submillimeter Galaxies in the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South: The AGN Fraction and X-Ray Properties of Submillimeter Galaxies”, ApJ, 778, 179
  11. Ouchi et al. 2013, “An Intensely Star-forming Galaxy at z ~ 7 with Low Dust and Metal Content Revealed by Deep ALMA and HST Observations”, ApJ, 778, 102
  12. Murillo et al. 2013, “A Keplerian disk around a Class 0 source: ALMA observations of VLA1623A”, A&A, 560, A103
  13. Moor et al. 2013, “ALMA Continuum Observations of a 30 Myr Old Gaseous Debris Disk around HD 21997”, ApJ, 777, L25
  14. Alves d Oliveira et al., 2013, ? Herschel survey of brown dwarf disks in ρ Ophiuchi”, A&A, 559, A126
  15. Izumi et al. 2013, “Submillimeter ALMA Observations of the Dense Gas in the Low-Luminosity Type-1 Active Nucleus of NGC 1097” PASJ, 65, 100
  16. Kospal et al. 2013, “ALMA Observations of the Molecular Gas in the Debris Disk of the 30 Myr Old Star HD 21997”, ApJ, 776, 77
  17.  Combes et al. 2013, “ALMA observations of feeding and feedback in nearby Seyfert galaxies: an AGN-driven outflow in NGC 1433”, A&A, 558, A124

 

I apologize if I have missed any papers that should appear on this list. 

 

4. ALMA Cycle 1 status

 

In my September article, I described how a combination of factors, primarily difficulties with reliable power, had made it difficult to make much progress with Cycle 1 observations. Although there was another round of serious power cuts in mid October (at a time when I myself was at the OSF trying to help with commissioning), I’m happy to report that at time of writing power has been very reliable since the end of October.  As a result, four blocks of Cycle 1 observations have been carried out over the past two months, which is good news.  Early Science is carried out in alternate weeks with commissioning activities. The execution efficiency for the first three blocks averaged 60%. Beginning with the fourth block, eight antennas were moved to antenna pads to achieve the more compact configuration C32-2. This configuration is more appropriate for summer weather (which often brings snow to the high site) and provides an intermediate resolution of 2” at 100 GHz.

Overall, 80 of the 197 highest priority Cycle 1 Projects have received time, 16 Projects have been partially delivered, and five have been completed. Two Director’s Discretionary Time projects have been delivered. A Project is composed of one or more datasets: about as many of those are currently under reduction as have been delivered so far. A listing of objects observed may be obtained via the ALMA Science Archive Query Form. PIs and Co-Is may query the status of their Project through the Project Tracker.

5. ALMA Development Studies and Projects

 

The ALMA Operations Plan envisages an on-going program of development and upgrades so that ALMA may continue to lead astronomical research through its lifetime. Construction of the first post-construction receiver bands  (Band 5  at 163-211 GHz or 2 mm and Band 1 at 35-50 GHz or 7 mm)  has begun. The ALMA Phasing Project has also begun; this project aims to bring the ALMA antennas into phase so that they behave like a single enormous telescope for inclusion in very long baseline experiments. The ALMA Executives made Calls for Studies several months ago for new development options and for new development projects. An external committee has reviewed the Studies and Projects submitted in response to the North American Call. A program for ALMA Development is being constructed from the committee recommendations and will be announced soon.

 

6. Further Information

 

A good source for monthly updates on the ALMA project is the electronic NRAO newsletter

http://science.nrao.edu/enews/. And don't forget the ALMA observatory web site http://www.almaobservatory.org/ which contains wide range of information about the observatory, including details about science and technology, infrastructure, geographical location.

 

An email list has been created for Canadian astronomers interested in ALMA.  This moderated list will periodically send out updates on ALMA's status, news of software releases, notices of upcoming ALMA science meetings and workshops, etc., which would be of interest to Canadian astronomers. Those who wish to be subscribe to the alma-users list are encouraged to visit the web page

http://lists.astrosci.ca/mailman/listinfo/alma-users or send an email to Gerald.Schieven(at)nrc-cnrc.gc.ca.

 

Chris Wilson wilson(at)physics.mcmaster.ca

 

Canadian ALMA Project Scientist

 

(with material from the NRAO newsletters and the ALMA web site)