New Capabilities
and Observing
Modes for Cy6
Hiroshi Nagai

Interim EA-ARC Manager

What’s new in Cy6?
• Circular polariza7on will be accepted for Bands 3, 4, 5, 6,and 7. The minimum detectable degree of circularpolariza7on, deﬁned as three 7mes the systema7c
calibra7on uncertainty, is currently 1.8% of the peak ﬂux
for both TDM and FDM observa7ons.
• Band 8 standard mode
• Band 8 ACA Standalone• Band 6 IF extension: The Band 6 IF bandwidth has been
increased by 0.5 GHz to extend from 4.5 to 10 GHz.

General Informa7on• ALMA Cycle 6 will start in early October 2018 and span 12months. It is an7cipated that 4000 hours of 12-m Array 7me will
be available for successful observa7ons of approved projects, and3000 hours will be available on the Atacama Compact Array(ACA), also known as the Morita Array.
18 December 2017

Cycle 6 pre-announcement

1 February 2018

Addi7onal informa7on on conﬁgura7on schedule

20 March 2018

Release of the ALMA Cycle 6 Call for Proposals and Observing
Tool, and opening of archive for proposal submission

19 April 2018

Proposal deadline

18-23 June 2018

Proposal Review mee7ng

End of July 2018

Result of the proposal review sent to Proposers

6 September 2018

Deadline for Phase 2 submission by Proposers

October 2018

Start of ALMA Cycle 6 observa7ons

September 2019

End of Cycle 6 observa7ons

Proposal Types• Same as in Cy5• Regular Proposals may request up to 50 hours of 12-m
Array 7me or up to 150 hours of ACA stand-alone 7me.
• Large Programs may request more than 50 hours of 12m Array 7me or more than 150 hours of ACA standalone 7me. Up to 600 hours of 12-m Array 7me and 450
hours of ACA stand-alone 7me will be allocated to Large
Programs.
• Proposals will be accepted for Very Long Baseline
Interferometry (VLBI) observa7ons with ALMA in Bands
3 and 6 (wavelengths 3 mm and 1.3 mm) in thecon7nuum only.

An7cipated Capabili7es• ≧forty-three antennas in the 12-m Array• ≧ten 7-m antennas and three 12-m antennas in the ACA• Receiver bands 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 (wavelengths ofabout 3.1, 2.1, 1.6, 1.3, 0.87, 0.74, 0.44 and 0.35 mm,
respec7vely)• Spectral line, con7nuum, and mosaic observa7ons‒ Spectral line and con7nuum observa7ons with the 12-m Array
and the 7-m Array in all bands‒ Single ﬁeld interferometry (all bands) and mosaics (Bands 3 to9) with the 12-m Array and the 7-m Array‒ Single dish spectral line observa7ons in Bands 3 to 8

An7cipated Capabili7es• 12-m conﬁgura7on• Maximum baselines for the antenna conﬁgura7ons will varyfrom 0.15 km to 16 km• Maximum baselines of 3.6 km for Bands 8, 9 and 10• Maximum baselines of 8.5 km for Band 7• Maximum baselines of 16 km for Bands 3, 4, 5 and 6• Antenna conﬁgura7on ﬁle for CASA simula7ons will be madeavailable on the ALMA Science Portal by 1 February 2018

• Single poin7ng, on axis, linear and circular polariza7onfor both con7nuum and full-spectral-resolu7on
observa7ons in Band 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 on the 12-m Array.
The ﬁeld of view of both linear and circular polariza7on
observa7ons is limited to the inner 1/3 of the primarybeam.

Standard / Non-standard modes• Standard mode observa7ons will be calibrated with theALMA Pipeline while non-standard by manual.
• Up to 20% of the observing 7me will be allocated tonon-standard.

ØBand 9 and 10 observa7ons (Band 8 is standard!)ØBand 7 observa7ons with maximum baselines > 5 kmØAll polariza7on observa7onsØSpectral scansØBandwidth switching projects (less than 0.9375 GHz aggregate
bandwidths over all spectral windows)ØSolar observa7ons (Bands 3 and 6)
ØVLBI observa7onsØUser-speciﬁed calibra7onsØAstrometry