Cycle 5 Proposals Statistics Shows Growing Demand for ALMA

24 May, 2017 / Read time: 2 minutes

Astronomers demand for observing time on ALMA continues to grow as a record number of 1664 proposals were submitted in response to the Cycle 5 Call for Proposals, after the preliminary filtering reduced the initial number of submission due to duplications. This first review of the proposals permitted to determine the subscription rate by region, by observation mode, and the requested time by ALMA band, and by sciences categories.

Cycle 5 not only established a new record regarding the number of proposals received but also in the number of hours requested, as seen in Figure 2.

While 4,000 hours are available in Cycle 5 for observations with the 12-m Array, a total of 16,347 hours were requested. Thus only 25% of the demanded time on ALMA will be scheduled.

Furthermore, the amount of time requested on the 12-m Array varied depending on the scientific category. The category “Cosmology & High Redshift Universe”, which received 31% of the requested time, was the most popular.

The full document “Cycle 5 Proposal Submission Statistics” can be downloaded here.

Additional information

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