Additional information from schedulingand Phase 2 Generation viewpoints

Daniel Espada
East Asian ALMA Regional Center
Specially Appointed Associate Professor

Summary•1) Weather pattern, configuration plan, observing
time available, and observing pressure•2) Duplications and Resubmission•3) Double check observing parameters beforedeadline•

4) Minor/Major changes•5) Other considerations

1) Weather pattern

Configuration
plan
Bands 7, 8, 9, and 10 and 5near 183 GHz are notrecommended around theAltiplanic winter at any LST

B9, and B10 will only bescheduled in these timeranges, and the rest will
also be limited for B7 andB8 observations

Configurations•Angular resolution: Single value / Range / Any / Standalone ACA•LAS, sensitivity

Effective Cycle 6 observing time

Observing Pressure•

The probability that an observation be scheduled
depends on the over-subscription for a given LST andconfiguration besides the required weather conditions.

•In particular in Cycle 5, projects requesting:•Configurations C43-8, 9, or 10 had a higher successrate than those requesting other configurations•stand-alone ACA observations have a highprobability of being scheduled, especially at LST
between 20 h and 14 h.

(Cycle 5) Observing Pressure
Requested time
Accepted•

Some LST ranges suchas 0-6 h or 13-19 h show
over-subscription•In general, proposals in
less subscribed LST
ranges will have a higher
probability of execution2) Duplications
Check proposed observations against both the ALMA archive and a list of projects
in the queue (grade A projects not started as of 2018 March 17).
https://almascience.nao.ac.jp/proposing/duplications

2) Duplications
Check proposed observations against both the ALMA archive and a list of projects
in the queue (grade A projects not started as of 2018 March 17).
https://almascience.nao.ac.jp/proposing/duplications

2) Duplications
Check proposed observations against both the ALMA archive and a list of projects
in the queue (grade A projects not started as of 2018 March 17).
https://almascience.nao.ac.jp/proposing/duplications

Resubmissions•Proposal teams that submit a Cycle 6 proposal to observe someor all SGs of a currently active but unfinished project will have therelevant SGs identified as a “resubmission” by ALMA.

•A SG is deemed a “resubmission” if it constitutes a duplication ofan active SG and the PI of the relevant Cycle 5 project is listed asa PI, co-PI or co-I of the corresponding Cycle 6 proposal or theCycle 6 PI is listed as an investigator on the Cycle 5 proposal.

•For such resubmissions, the relevant portion of the Cycle 6proposal will be cancelled if the observations are successfullycompleted in Cycle 5. Observations started in a previous cycle
and accepted as a resubmission in Cycle 6 will continue to beobserved with the setup of the previous cycle.

3) Check your observing setup•

Target properties (coordinates,velocity/redshift)•Single pointing/Mosaic information•

Spectral setup•

Angular resolution/LAS and sensitivity. Timeconstraints?

•… and make sure sufficient justification in theTechnical justification4) Minor and Major changes•

Changes to a submitted proposal are not permitted
prior to the completion of the review process•

Minor changes in the Science Goals can usually bemade during the Phase 2 process by the PI•

PIs of proposals assigned a grade of A, B, or C may
request changes to their projects subject to the ALMA
Change Request policies described in the Users’
Policies. These are decided by change request
committee

5) Other considerations•Non standard observations: Remember that only 20% of the timegoes to non-standard modes, so select if really needed. Note thatBand 8 observations is standard.

• Aggregate bandwidth (sum of bandwidths of all spectralwindows): Try to maximize because it is used for calibration. Ifaggregate bandwidth less than ~1 GHz then it is non-standard• ToO: Observations that can be anticipated, but for which source

coordinates and timing are not known at proposal submission time
(Examples: Supernovae, gamma ray bursts, transients) Just time
critical is not ToO and should be submitted as a regular proposal• Spectral scan:

If long on-source times and many frequency
tunings then it is more efficient to setup such spectral scans using
separate SGs for each frequency tuning.