A New Opportunity to Explore the Universe 

ALMA opens Call for Proposals for Cycle 12 

The ALMA Observatory, in collaboration with its partners, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the European Southern Observatory (ESO), and the National Radio Astronomical Observatory (NRAO) of the United States, announce the opening of the Cycle 12 Call for Proposals, inviting the scientific community to submit observing projects for the period from October 1st, 2025, to September 30th, 2026. 

The application process began Thursday, March 20th, 2025, at 15:00 UTC, and researchers will have until Thursday, April 24th, 2025, at 15:00 UTC to submit their proposals. 

For this cycle, ALMA will allocate 4.300 observing hours on each antenna array, including the 12-meter array, Total Power, and the Atacama Compact Array (ACA, also known as the Morita Array). 

The Head of the ALMA Science Operations Department, Sergio Martin, highlights a key advance in this call: “For the first time, we will offer polarization observations with the 7-meter Array, and monitoring with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) will be enabled, allowing very high-resolution observations for the study of black holes”. 

In addition, priority will be given to proposals that include: 

•  Observations with the ACA (between 1 to 20 hours of duration). 

•  High frequency in bands 8, 9, and 10 in any configuration. 

•  Low frequency in bands 1, 3, and 4 in more extended configurations. 

With this new call, ALMA reaffirms its commitment to advancing astronomy, offering the scientific community access to cutting-edge tools to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos. 

Additional Information

ALMA is a partnership of ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada), NSTC and ASIAA (Taiwan), and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ.