Results of the Cycle 11 Call for Proposals: Community responded enthusiastically to the Joint Proposal opportunity

10 May, 2024 / Read time: 2 minutes

Results after closing the Cycle 11 Call for Proposals (CfP) shows the community submitted 1,713 proposals to make observations with ALMA, marking a slight increase from the previous year's Cycle 10 (1,679), thus maintaining consistency in request numbers (see fig. 1). Each proposal will now go through an anonymous selection process to determines which projects will be observed in this cycle.

The amount of requested observing time for the 12-m array continues to increase steadily: 31,751 hours stands as the most time ever requested in a single cycle (see fig. 2). The amount of observing time requested is 7.4 times larger than the amount of time available.

Even though the amount of time requested for the Morita Array (in both 7-m array and Total Power array) decreased, the number of submitted proposals for it is approximately the same as recent cycles, with a strong oversubscription of 3.0 on the 7-m array. This means there were fewer proposals requesting very large amounts of observation time for both the 7-m (with approximately 14,000 hours) and Total Power (with 9,000 hours) arrays this year, in comparison to the previous Cycle 10 (see fig. 2).

The community interest in Large Programs remains strong, as 42 proposals were submitted for 4,700 hours on the 12-m array, close to the previous year record, with 44 proposals requesting nearly 5,000 hours. The 7-m and TP arrays received 2,200 and 1,300 hours of observation requests respectively.

The community responded enthusiastically once again to the Joint Proposal opportunity. A total of 67 Joint Proposals were submitted, which is a 60% increase over Cycle 10 (with 42 proposals). In total, 50 Joint Proposals requested time on James Webb Space Telescope (almost twice than previous cycle), 14 requested NRAO’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), and 5 requested the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT). 

“The continued strong demand for ALMA time is a testament to the great science ALMA has carried out to date. We look forward to the exciting science and the new discoveries in Cycle 11.”, says John Carpenter, ALMA Observatory Scientist.

The proposals have been distributed to the reviewers, and the results of the review process will be distributed by early August.

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.

Images