1Proposer’s Guide for Cycle 8EA ARC

2ALMA Science Portal
https://almascience.nao.ac.jp/

3Cycle 7 operations suspended

Please wait for the further notice about
resuming the observations

2014/4/16

Delay of the Cycle 8 Proposal
Submission Deadline
The novel coronavirus COVID-19 continues to impact the global
community. As such, the ALMA Director, along with the regional
partners, have decided to delay the proposal deadline for the ALMA
Cycle 8 Call for Proposals to NO EARLIER than 1500 UT on 19 May,2020.
The Regional ARCs have adjusted working conditions to supportthe Cycle 8 Call and, as of now, can provide support to theircommunities.
As we continue to monitor the conditions worldwide, we will assess thefeasibility of this deadline and provide additional updates to thecommunity as needed. The next update to the community will be
provided NO LATER than 21 April, 2020 on the status of the call andthe support for the scientific community at the ARCs.
... We want to continue to hear your concerns (please submit
Helpdesk tickets) and will take the appropriate action to address
them. It’s important now to consider the health and well-being ofyourself and those around you – that should be the primary focus as
we navigate through these stressful times.

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Tentative schedule
Still very uncertain

6The page you need to checkIf you are not familiar withproposing to ALMA…

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Another information source
Any changes, clarifications, or bugs that are discovered after thepublication of Proposer’s Guide will be documented here:

https://help.almascience.org/index.php?/
Knowledgebase/Article/View/414(link can be found in the Proposers Guide)ALMA• Interferometer consisting of 66 antennas• Fifty 12m antennas → 12m Array• Atacama Compact Array (ACA; MoritaArray）• Twelve 7m (7m Arary)• Four 12m (Total Power, TP)©NAOJ

10Bands (frequency, wavelength)

11Cycle 8 Calls (current plan)• Cycle 8: October 2020 to September 2021
• Supplemental call for ACA stand-alone: January
2021 – September 2021
• Main Call: 4300 hours for 12-m Array, at least
3000 for ACA each for 7-m and TP arrays– Grade C for ACA in the Main Call this time

• What you need to prepare– Observation planning (science goals, technicaljustifications…), proposal submission tool: Observing
Tool (OT) → hands-on session by Nick
– Scientific Justification: PDF attached to OTSupplemental Call for ACA
useful to know for the proposal planning
Please be aware that the Call and the schedule are still uncertain.
1. Maximize the scientific output of the ACA by allowing
more timely science to be proposed.
2. Distributed Peer Review System will be used.
PI or a designated reviewer selected from among the co-Isof the proposal, will be responsible for reviewing 10proposals• The amount of observing time to be allocated during
the ACA Supplemental Call will be determined later.
• Proposals that are scheduled for observation from theCycle 8 supplemental CfP will be given a grade Cobserving priority.

15 September 2020
8 October 2020

Release of CfP
Proposal deadline

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What’s New• Observing capabilities → Nagai-san’s talk
• Dual Anonymous Review will start from Cycle 8– Please follow the writing guideline → Shimajiri-san’s talk
– Large Program needs to submit one-page management planvia email• Web start is no longer available for OT → Nick’spresentation• Grade C as well as A and B will be assigned for projects
including ACA in the Main Call (different from the previouscycle)• Grade C as well as A and B can be assigned to time criticalprojects (not for ToO)
• TP-alone can be proposed with the combination of the 7-marray → see section A.1 in the Proposer’s Guide• DDT project will stay in the observing queue for 12 months
from the approval

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Proposal types and available time
The same proposal types as in the previous cycle
will be accepted.
• Regular Proposals may request up to 50 hours of 12m Array time or up to 150 hours of ACA stand-alonetime.
• Regular Proposals may include all the available
observing modes and may involve time-critical,
multiple-epoch observations, and the monitoring of atarget over a fixed time interval.
• Large Programs are proposals with an estimatedexecution time of >50 hours on the 12-m Array (withor without accompanying ACA time) or >150 hours
on the 7-m Array in stand-alone mode.
• LPs should not involve time-critical or ToO
observations, and may not involve full polarization
measurements, Solar observations, VLBI, pulsar
mode, or Astrometric observations.

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Proposal types and available time
• Target of Opportunity (ToO) Proposals should besubmitted for observations that can be anticipated but
whose targets and/or time of observation are notknown in advance. Like Regular Proposals, these
proposals must be submitted by the Cycle 8 proposal
deadline.
• ALMA mm-VLBI Proposals are made in concert with theGlobal Millimetre VLBI Array (GMVA) at 3 mm and theEvent Horizon Telescope Consortium (EHTC) network at
1.3 mm. Up to 5% of available time.
• Up to 5% of the available time may be allocated toproposals submitted for Director’s Discretionary Time.

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Proposal types and available time
• There is no “non-standard” mode with the 20%
cap of the available time. Good science can gettime, regardless of standard or non-standard basedon the past statistics.
• Please carefully check which observing mode isavailable for Large Program, ACA stand-alone etc.
→ Nagai-san will explain the observing capabilities forCycle 8

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Proposal types and available time
• Success rate is not so different at execution time of lessthan about 20 hours.

(Left) Number of proposals submitted as a function of the 12-m Array execution time inCycle 7. (Right) The fraction of proposals (with 1σ confidence intervals) that are assigned
priority Grade A or B as a function of the estimated 12-m Array time.

18Scheduling consideration• Weather → Proposer’s Guide• Angular resolution– PIs can request a range of resolutions.
An extended range, spanning morethan one configuration, will lead to anincreased chance of observations.
– If the PI selects a single value for theangular resolution or a range narrower
than 20% around its centre value, arange of 20% around the single orcentre value specified will be enforced.
PIs are strongly encouraged to think
about the range of acceptable angularresolutions, considering the declination of
their targets.
Starting in Cycle 7, the time-estimate
dialogue in the OT will show the expected
2-D beam shape and maximum axial ratio
based on observations near transit.

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Scheduling consideration• No C-9/10 in Cycle 8 is planned. The overall schedule may be
modified depending on such as the proposal pressure in the
different configurations. Pressure for LST → Proposer’s Guide

20Duplications• Duplicate observations of the same location on the sky
with similar observing parameters (frequency, angularresolution, coverage, and sensitivity) are notpermitted unless scientifically justified. Detailed
criteria of what constitutes a duplicated observation
are specified in Appendix A of the Users’ Policies.
• PIs are responsible for checking
their proposed observations
against both the ALMA Archiveand the spreadsheet provided
below to avoid duplicateobservations.
• The proposal cover sheet contains
a section where PIs can justify
proposed duplicate observations.

21Resubmissions• Proposal teams that submit a Cycle 8 proposal to observe
some or all the SGs of a currently active but unfinishedproject will have the relevant SGs identified as a“resubmission” by ALMA. A SG is deemed a resubmission if
it constitutes a duplication of an active SG following therules specified in Appendix A of the Users’ Policies and thePI of the relevant Cycle 7 project is listed as a PI, co-I orco-PI of the corresponding Cycle 8 proposal or the Cycle 8
PI is listed as an investigator on the Cycle 7 proposal.
• The relevant portion of the Cycle 8 proposal will becancelled if the observations are successfully completed inCycle 7. Observations started in a previous cycle andaccepted as a resubmission in Cycle 8 will continue to beobserved with the setup of the previous cycle.

• A scientific justification must be provided if the proposers
request one or more additional epochs of observations inCycle 8 even if the Cycle 7 observations are completed. TheAPRC will decide if such resubmissions are accepted.

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Proposal format• Dual-anonymous proposal review will start from Cycle 8.
This is to ensure that the proposal review process is asfair and unbiased as much as possible. PIs areresponsible to anonymize their proposals. If PIs do notfollow the guideline on how to write, their proposals
will be rejected.
Please do not be worried too much. Please do notcompletely or intentionally ignore the guideline.

→ Shimajiri-san will explain later.

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Proposal format• Large Programs management plan

– A one-page PDF document to describe themanagement plan. This plan should include aschedule of work, a description of the roles ofthe proposal team, and a plan to disseminate
the results, as well as available computing
resources and an assessment of scheduling
feasibility. This statement must be sent to theALMA Proposal Handling Team (pht@alma.cl) byemail and received before the proposal deadline.
Proposers can include names and affiliations ofinvestigators in this one-page document.
– PIs of Large Programmes are encouraged tocontact their corresponding ARC/ARC node to
get help for estimating the needed resources.

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Proposal format• Page limits– Total length: 4 pages for Regular, ToO, Solar, mmVLBI and DDT proposals, 6 pages for Large
Programmes (A4 or US Letter format)• Font size: no smaller than 12 points including
figure captions, tables and references– The OT will check the font size of the PDF and issue
an error during proposal validation if more than 15%of the text is smaller than 12 points. To submit theproposal, any problems with small fonts must first befixed.

• Latex template is in the Science Portal and users
can use it.

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Proposal format• Each proposal must describe the scientific importanceof the proposed project and include a clear statement of
its immediate observing goals. It is also recommended
to provide a brief justification of the requested
sensitivity and angular resolution, with full details
provided in the Technical Justification.
• Proposers can simulate ALMA observations using
different array components and configurations.
Simulations are not required.
• Since proposal reviewers are selected with expertisethat covers the various topics within a proposal
category, the scientific justification should be written fora knowledgeable, but broad-based, audience.

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Proposal evaluation and selection• The JAO will take the recommendations of the APRC
and form an observing queue based primarily on thescientific ranking from the APRC, also taking into
account the scheduling constraints dictated by theconfiguration schedule and weather, the share ofobserving time for each region, and the timeconstraints on the proposal type.
• Up to 33% of the nominal time will be assigned toGrade A proposals and 67% to Grade B proposals.
• Grade C will be assigned to proposals for filler timeto ensure that an adequate number of projects areavailable for all configurations and LST ranges incase the actual observing efficiency or weather
conditions differ from expectations.

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What’s New• Observing capabilities → Nagai-san’s talk
• Dual Anonymous Review will start from Cycle 8– Please follow the writing guideline → Shimajiri-san’s talk– Large Program needs to submit one-page management plan
via email• Web start is no longer available for OT → Nick’spresentation• Grade C as well as A and B will be assigned for projects
including ACA in the Main Call (different from the previouscycle)• Grade C as well as A and B can be assigned to time criticalprojects (not for ToO)
• TP-alone can be proposed with the combination of the 7-marray → see section A.1 in the Proposer’s Guide• DDT project will stay in the observing queue for 12 months
from the approval