ALMA Cycle 10 Call for Proposals is Now Open

12 April, 2023 / Read time: 3 minutes

On behalf of the Joint ALMA Observatory and the partner organizations led by NAOJin East Asia, ESO in Europe, and NRAO in North America, the ALMA Director, Sean Dougherty, is pleased to announce the ALMA Cycle 10 Call for Proposals for scientific observations to be scheduled from October 2023 to September 2024. It is anticipated that 4,300 hours of the 12-m Array time and the Morita Array (a.k.a. Atacama Compact Array – ACA) time will be available for successful Principal Investigators' proposals in Cycle 10. The submission deadline is May 10 at 15:00 UT.

"With new Band 1 observations and the option to submit joint proposals with other facilities, among the rest of the new capabilities, astronomers will be able to produce a lot of innovative and exciting new science", says Elizabeth Humphreys, ALMA's Head of the Department of Science Operations. "From analyzing the dust and gas in nearby protoplanetary disks to detecting very high redshift galaxies, this new cycle comes with a whole new set of tools to continue the quest of our cosmic origins."

The Cycle 10 new capabilities are:

• Band 1 on the 12-m Array and for Stokes I only (no Stokes Q/U/V) is anticipated to be available from March 2024.
• Spectral scans that include Total Power observations.
• 4x4-bit spectral modes for improved sensitivity on the 12-m Array (dual polarization).
• Solar observations in full polarization in Band 3 using only the 12-m Array.
• Phased array mode in Bands 1, 3, 6, and 7 (the total time available for this mode will be limited to 50 hours).
• VLBI in Bands 1, 3, 6, and 7, including flexible tuning for spectral lines.

New in Cycle 10 will be the availability of Joint Proposals with other facilities, including the Space Telescope Science Institute's James Webb Space Telescope, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.

Also, new this Cycle, Band-to-band phase calibration will be available for high-frequency observations on both the 7-m Array and all 12-m Array configurations. The total time available for projects needing band-to-band phase calibration will be limited.

For more information on the submission process, visit the ALMA Science Portal.

ALMA ambassadors from the North American ALMA Science Center (NAASC, NRAO) have arranged a series of targeted proposal preparation workshops at institutes across the U.S., Canada, and Chile, to be held from April 14 to 27. More information about these sessions and links to the individual registration pages can be found here.

The European ALMA Regional Centre (ARC) network is organizing virtual and in-person proposal preparation events related to the Cycle 10 Call for Proposals across Europe. A complete overview of the activities and information about participating can be found here.

The East Asia ALMA Regional Center and its nodes in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea organize meetings to assist ALMA users in preparing Cycle 10 proposals. Each regional session will cover content optimized for the local user community. Information can be found here (Japan), here (Taiwan), and here (Korea).

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.

Poster