Proposing your observations
for ALMA Cycle 10
Takuma Izumi
East Asia ALMA Regional Center
18st April 2023

2023/4/17

1

ALMA• Interferometer consisting of 66 antennas in total• Fifty 12-m antennas 12-m Array• Atacama Compact Array (ACA; Morita Array）• Twelve 7-m (7-m Arrary), Four 12-m (Total Power, TP)• From 0.32 mm to 8.5 mm (Band 1 to 10, except for Band 2) for Cycle 10©Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), A. Marinkovic/X-Cam

ALMA Regional Center (ARC):
Interface for users
Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO)

Effective array operations: Execution of programs under suitable conditions
High availability of the array for science : Repairs, Preventive maintenance

Science operations in regional centers with functions agreed in
EA, EU, and NA, in close coordination with JAO

EA ARCEU ARCNA ARCEA ALMA users

EU ALMA users

NA ALMA users

2023/4/17• ARC provides support for users in the respective regions so that users canconcentrate on proposing observations, data analysis, and science discussion.
• Support can be optimized to the regional situation (e.g., native language,
specific demands from users).
3Proposing observations in ALMA
• “Cycle” in ALMA: One year period, starting from October every year
• Cycle 10: From October 2023 to September 2024
• Calls every year
• Main Call
• 12-m Array, 7-m Array, TP• Call for Proposals in April this time (usually in March)• Observations from October to next September• 4300 hours for each of the 12-m, 7-m, and TP Arrays in Cycle 10• Supplemental Call … No Supplemental Call for Cycle 10• DDT• Users can propose anytime in the on-going cycle• DDT projects will stay in the queue for 12 months
4

Proposing observations in ALMA
• Science observations will be scheduled and executed by taking into account multiple factors
including, for example, weather, proposal grade, and executive balance• Priorities• Grade A• Highest grade, carried over to the next Cycle(Long baseline SBs are not carried over to the next Cycle
SBs without LB)• Grade B• No carry over
• Grade C• Filler“Users Policies”
https://
almascience.nao.ac.j
p/documents-andtools/cycle10/almauser-policies• After observations…
• Quality assurance (meet the PI’s request?) per MOUS  if fine, deliver to the PI• Data become public after 12 months (6 months for DDT), no waive from ALMA-side
5

Information is in the Science Portal
https://almascience.nao.ac.jp/

You can login here.
You can find documents
related to proposal
planning/submission.
Please check“Proposer’s Guide” inparticular.

2023/4/17

You can check any news here.

Please register yourscience expertise inyour Profile (click“Preferences” menu).
The information will be
used in the assignmentof proposals that you
will review (distributed
peer review)6… and ask us via the Helpdesk
https://help.almascience.org• We can also accept Japanese questions although you may need to wait until theJapanese staff are available (be careful, in particular just before the deadline)

You will be asked to login when you try to submit aticket. Please register in the Science Portal first if
you do not have an account.
Please use your registered email address for thelogin name in the Helpdesk (same password as the
Science Portal when you login for the first time)
2023/4/17

7

… and ask us via the Helpdesk
https://help.almascience.org• Any changes, clarifications, orbugs that are discovered after
the publication of the Proposer’s
Guide will be documented in the
Knowledgebase article.
• Helpdesk → Knowledgebase• Recommend to monitor this page
regularly
https://help.almascience.org/kb/articles/
what-cycle-10-proposal-issues-andclarifications-should-i-be-aware-ofbefore-submitting-my-pro

Register/update your “Expertise” in your profile• Please register/update your “Expertise” in your user profile. This is extremely
important for the proposal assignments in the distributed peer review system.
Please select one to as many keywords as yourexpertise requires.
You can also specify “conflicts of interest” here.

Login or newly register

Updating the profile in“Preferences”

Click “Next” button to move to the“Expertise” tab.
After updating the keywords, go to thefinal “Confirm” tab, then submit.

Schedule
Date

Milestone

12 April 2023
(15:00 UT)

Release of Cycle 10 CfP, Observing Tool, and supporting documents, andopening of the Archive for proposal submission

10 May 2023
(15:00 UT)

Proposal submission deadline for Cycle 10 proposals

28 June 2023
(15:00 UT)

Deadline to submit reviews for the distributed peer review system

August 2023

Announcement of the outcome of the proposal review process

October 2023

Start of ALMA Cycle 10 science observations

September 2024

End of ALMA Cycle 10

Emergency Department in the Helpdesk: will start 72 hours before the deadline (15:00 May 7).
→ Only to be used to address problems that “block” your proposal. Need to be written in English.
You can submit tickets to the usual department if the topic is not related to the proposal submission. Those will
be handled as usual.

What should proposers know? What’s new?
Observing capabilities Observing Tool Nagai-san’s talkJorge’s talk

Scheduling and Phase 2 generation viewpoints 

Yu-Ting’s talk

• Band 1 on the 12-m array: Stokes-I only. Start from March 2024. No C-7 andC-8 configurations.
• Spectral scans that include Total Power observations (TP spectral scan).
• 4x4-bit spectral mode on the 12-m array: improves the sensitivity, but limited
to some spectral setups.
• Solar observations in full polarization in Band 3 using 12-m array only.
• Phased array mode in Bands 1, 3, 6, and 7: total allocated time < 50 hrs• Continuum and spectral line VLBI in Bands 1, 3, 6, and 7: with flexible tuning.

Proposal types• Regular, Large Program, Target of Opportunity, VLBI and phased-array, Joint proposal, (and DDT)
• Regular• Execution time does not exceed 50 hours on the 12-m Array or 150 hours on the 7-m
Array in stand-alone mode.
• Incl. time-critical, multi-epoch observations, and monitoring for a fixed time-interval.

• High successrate in the
30-40 hrs range.
• Proposals with
>40 hrs seem tobe highlycompetitive.

Figure 1: (Left) Number of proposals submitted as a function of the 12-m Array execution time in Cycle 9.
(Right) The fraction of proposals (with 1 confidence intervals) that were assigned priority Grade A or B as a

High frequency observations• Projects with observations in the highest frequency Bands 8, 9, and 10 are
strongly encouraged.
• Prioritized to execute if theweather condition is good.
• But please check carefully theavailability of “high frequency
time” for a given configuration
and Band (shown in PG).
• B2B transfer to obtain a goodand bright phase calibrator→ Jorge’s talk (OT)
“I hesitatedto propose
I saw
how little
ALMA
has
spent
Figure 5: Estimatedobservingwhen
time available
per configuration
for time
executing
PI projects,
based
on precipitable
water
vapor
(PWV)
only.
For
example,approximately
30
hours
are
expectedtobeavailable
in C-4 at LST
for HF bands.” …but this also comes from few proposals.

05 h for all observations and up to 15 hours of those may be allocated to Large Programs. The time available
for Large Programs is shown in pink and time for high-frequency observations in green and dark blue. The
configuration schedule and, consequently, the total number of hours available per configuration may change inLarge Program• Estimated execution time >50 hours on the 12-m Array (with orwithout accompanying ACA time) or 150 hours on the 7-m Array instand-alone mode.
• Large Programs should not involve time-critical or ToO observations,and may not include Band 1, full polarization measurements, solar
observations, VLBI, Phased Array mode, Astrometric observations orobservations requiring band-to-band calibration or bandwidth
switching calibration.
• Large Programs may fill up to 50% of the available time for a given
LST range in the available Cycle 10 configurations (i.e., the ACA and12-m C-1 through C-8).

Large Program• Please do not hesitate to propose large scale proposals!
• Planning of Large Programs• A LP proposal should address strategic scientific issues that will lead to amajor advance or breakthrough in the field, be a coherent science projectand not reproducible by a combination of Regular proposals, lead to valueadded data products (need to submit to ALMA within one year of the final
calibrated products), and contain a solid management plan (one page
separate document) ensuring an efficient utilization of the data.
• ARCs can provide kinds of assistance to the LP teams for making
observation strategy, and preparation of the management plans. PIs areencouraged to contact the ARC early in the proposal process.
• Computing and storage, estimates of available observing hours in each
LST, observation settings etc.

and call for proposals guidelines of each of the requested partner observatories, as well as the extra limitations
and rules imposed on Joint Proposals by each observatory. Joint proposals must be explicitly specified as suchin the ALMA OT and in the submission tools of the partner observatories.

Joint
Proposal
PIs must submit
their Joint Proposals to the observatory that requires the most observing time. In the caseof ALMA, the relevant time request will be the amount of time requested for the 12-m Array, or the 7-m
in case of
ACA
proposals. Inand/or
Joint Proposals,
ALMA is the "Main"observatory
if it is• JointArray
Proposals
willbestand-alone
multi-wavelength
multi-observatory
in nature.
Synergies
the observatory
withmajor
the largest
time request,
ALMA is the "Partner" observatory. The same Joint
between
ALMA andfacilities
are otherwise
expected.
Proposal cannot be submitted to multiple observatories, i.e., a submitted proposal cannot be under review by• JWST,
VLA,observatory.
and VLT are“partner
observatories”.
You cantimeandforrejectanysuchor allanother
Both theALMA
and the partner
observatories reserve
the request
right to identify
duplicatesubmissions.
of thesefacilities.
By agreement, eachpartnerobservatory
willwillallowallow
ALMAALMA
to allocate
on theirtime
telescopes
for Joint Proposals• By agreement,
eachpartner
facility
to timeallocate
as follows.
You willsubmitted
to ALMA: to
STScIallow observatory”
ALMA to allocatethat
up totakes
115 hours
JWST time;
NRAO willtime.
allow
submitthe proposal
thewill“Main
theoflongest
observing
ALMA to allocate up to 5% of the available time on the VLA; and ESO will allow ALMA to allocate up to 50• If ALMA
observatory,
there
are
restrictionsforobserving
hoursisof theVLT Maintime. Similarly,
ALMA will
allocate
115nohours,
50 hours, and50 thehoursALMA’s
for proposals
submitted to
JWST,
VLA,
and VLT,
respectively
on each of the(12-m, 7-m,
and TP). These(especiallyallowed time allocations
modes.
But
there
are some
restrictions
inArrays
the otherobservatories
for ToO).
are checksummarized
Table 2.
PleasetheinProposer’s
Guide carefully.
PartnerMaximum time ALMA can allocate
on partner observatory

Maximum time partner observatory
can allocate on each ALMA array

JWST

115 hours

115 hours

VLA

5% of available time

50 hours

VLT

50 hours

50 hours

Proposal format• Page limits• Total length: 4 pages for Regular, ToO, mm-VLBI, Joint, and DDT
proposals, 6 pages for Large Programs (A4 or US Letter)• Font size: no smaller than 12 points including figure captions, tables
and references• FAQ: https://help.almascience.org/kb/articles/why-is-the-ot-is-complaining-thatthe-text-in-my-pdf-is-too-small• Latex template is in the Science Portal and users are recommended touse it.

C-6

C-7

C-8

No Supplemental Call
• Cycle 10 will NOT include a Supplemental CfP for stand-alone ACA
observations.
• The community
is
C-10
encouraged to submit
ACA stand alone
projects, especially in
the LST range of 20h to
10h, for this May 2023
deadline.
20

]

0

5

10

LST [ho

15

20

]

7-m

1000

500

0
0

To al Po e

1000

500

5

10

LST [ho

15

20

]

0
0

5

10

LST [ho15

20]

Estimated execution time in Cycle 9 for submitted (gray) and
Grade A/B/C (blue) projects.

n of estimated execution time in Cycle 9 for all submitted proposals (gray) and prop

Review process• Panel review for Large programs, distributed peer review for the others• Distributed Peer Review: For each proposal submitted, the PI or a designee from the list ofinvestigators will review and rank 10 submitted proposals.
• DPR: reviewers can be assigned a maximum of five proposal sets (i.e., 50 proposals) → Thus
PIs who are planning to submit more proposals are encouraged to designate one of their co-Is
as reviewer.
• All proposals will be reviewed in dual-anonymous• Exception: one-page management plan for Large Programs• Joint Proposals will also be reviewed with the DPR system. Joint Proposals should follow theusers’ policies and call for proposal guidelines of each of the requested partner observatories, aswell as extra limitations and rules imposed on Joint Proposals.
• All Joint Proposals will be technically assessed by each of the requested observatories. Eachobservatory will follow their technical criteria. If any of the involved observatories declares the
proposal infeasible, ALMA will reject the entirety of this proposal.

Other notes• Please ensure your correct affiliation and executive• No Phase 2 deadline for PIs:
• Please carefully check that your observing setting at Phase 1 (proposal
submission) is correct. Major changes can’t be done so easily (Yu-Ting’s talk)• Upper cap for a few observing modes:• As Nagai-san will present, there will be a time cap in the total hours for a few
modes, but please do not hesitate to propose. Users seemed to have overreacted to this type of cap.
• Source coordinates (stated in the Users Policies):• Please do not intentionally hide the true coordinates.
• Proprietary periods (stated in the User Policies):• PIs can’t voluntarily waive the proprietary period in their proposal.

Archive features
ALMA Science Archive in the Request Handler page

① Search the data as usual③ Click“Request
download”② After choosing the data,
click this for data request.

https://sites.google.com/inaf.it/ari-l

Automatic search for similar
proposals with a mouse over of “…”2023/4/17

21

Archive features
ALMA Science Archive in the Request Handler page
⑤ Click the link icon to
CARTA as a viewer

A new webpage
automatically opens inyour browser! (You do nothave to install CARTA
desktop version).

④ Open the filetree by clicking ▶
https://sites.google.com/inaf.it/ari-l

You can check and analyze the images/
cubes without downloading the data to yourlocal disk. (e.g., you can generate andimmediately check moment maps in CARTA)
2023/4/17

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Archive features: ARI-L
Additional Representative Images for Legacy (ARI-L):
A uniform set of full data cubes and continuum images of the data from Cycles 2-4.
In the Request Handler page,
you will see “external” with the
package name “ari_l”.

ARI-L images are also in
the JVO archive in
NAOJ

https://sites.google.com/inaf.it/ari-l

In the search results page, it says “ARI-L”

2023/4/17

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ALMA-J support• Support for the English editing service in April• Deadline of application to us: May 1, 17:00 JST• ALMA-J Users Email List
https://www2.nao.ac.jp/~eaarc/DATARED/alma_users_email_list.html

Keeping the anonymity in your proposal writing• Goal: To have reviewers focus on the scientific merit of the proposal rather thanthe proposal team
• It is the responsibility of the proposers to ensure anonymity is preserved in theinformation provided in the cover sheet, and when preparing the Scientific
Justification and Technical Justification.
• You do not have to be too worried about possible rejections as long as you aretrying to follow the guideline. But, please do not ignore the guideline, and please
do not clearly specify who is the PI in the proposal text, e.g., please do not say“We showed in Smith et al. (2019) that …”.
FAQ in EA: Resubmission, Projectcode/ID of previous/ongoingobservations
 Examples in the Science Portal
https://almascience.nao.ac.jp/proposing/alma-proposal-review/dual-anonymous

Dual-anonymous
FAQ: Resubmission
While proposers may note if they are resubmitting an ongoing proposal, they cannot indicate theproposal code, investigator’s name, priority grade, and/or ranking of the previous proposal.
For example, instead of“This is a resubmission of our ongoing program 2021.1.02045.S (PI: Smith). Half of our targets
have been observed and we are resubmitting the proposal to obtain the remaining half.”
proposers can write“This is a resubmission of our ongoing program. Half of the targets have been observed and weare resubmitting the proposal to observe the remaining half.”
Such text is normally included in the “duplication justification” on the proposal cover sheet or the
first lines of the Scientific Justification. If data are shown from the ongoing program, it must bepresented in a dual-anonymous fashion following the guidelines.

Dual-anonymous
FAQ: Project code/ID of previous/ongoing observations• Example 1,• Instead of:“Figure 1 shows the image from our Cycle 7 ALMA program (2019.1.02045.S, PI Smith).”proposers can write“Figure 1 shows the image from the Cycle 7 ALMA program 2019.1.02045.S.”or“Figure 1 shows the data from an ALMA Cycle 7 program (private communication).”• Example 2, instead of:“We will combine these ALMA observations with the HST program led by Chang et al.”or“The proposed ALMA observations will be combined with our HST data…”
proposers can write"We will combine these ALMA observations with the HST observations (HST code XXX).”
or“The proposed ALMA observations will be combined with available HST data (private communication)...”• Example 3, instead of:“We use our group’s line identification package STAR…” or “We use the line identification package STAR by co-I Sandra
Smith…”
proposers can write“We use the line identification package STAR (obtained via private communication)...”

Resolution, array configuration
Config.

Band

1

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Freq. (GHz)

40

100

150

185

230

345

460

650

870

45 m

✓res (arcsec)

31.5

12.5

8.35

6.77

5.45

3.63

2.72

1.93

1.44

9m

✓M RS (arcsec)

167

66.7

44.5

36.1

29.0

19.3

14.5

10.3

7.67

161 m

✓res (arcsec)

8.45

3.38

2.25

1.83

1.47

0.98

0.74

0.52

0.39

15 m

✓M RS (arcsec)

71.2

28.5

19.0

15.4

12.4

8.25

6.19

4.38

3.27

314 m

✓res (arcsec)

5.75

2.30

1.53

1.24

1.00

0.67

0.50

0.35

0.26

15 m

✓M RS (arcsec)

56.5

22.6

15.0

12.2

9.81

6.54

4.90

3.47

2.59

500 m

✓res (arcsec)

3.55

1.42

0.94

0.77

0.62

0.41

0.31

0.22

0.16

15 m

✓M RS (arcsec)

40.5

16.2

10.8

8.73

7.02

4.68

3.51

2.48

1.86

784 m

✓res (arcsec)

2.30

0.92

0.61

0.50

0.40

0.27

0.20

0.14

0.11

15 m

✓M RS (arcsec)

28.0

11.2

7.50

6.08

4.89

3.26

2.44

1.73

1.29

1.4 km✓res (arcsec)

1.38

0.55

0.36

0.30

0.24

0.16

0.12

0.084

0.063

15 m

✓M RS (arcsec)

16.8

6.70

4.47

3.62

2.91

1.94

1.46

1.03

0.77

2.5 km✓res (arcsec)

0.78

0.31

0.20

0.17

0.13

0.089

0.067

0.047

15 m

✓M RS (arcsec)

10.3

4.11

2.74

2.22

1.78

1.19

0.89

3.6 km✓res (arcsec)

0.21

0.14

0.11

0.092

0.061

64 m

✓M RS (arcsec)

2.58

1.72

1.40

1.12

8.5 km✓res (arcsec)

0.096

0.064

0.052

110 m

✓M RS (arcsec)

1.42

0.95

0.77

Lmax

Start date

Configuration

Longest baseline

LST for best observing conditions

2023 October 1

C-8

8.5 km

⇠ 22—10 h

2023 October 20

C-7

3.6 km⇠ 23—11 h

2023 November 10

C-6

2.5 km

⇠ 1—13 h2023 December 1

C-5

1.4 km

⇠ 2—14 h2023 December 20

C-4

0.78 km⇠ 4—15 h2024 January 10

C-3

0.50 km

⇠ 5—17 h2024 February 1

No observations due to maintenance2024 March 1

C-1

0.16 km

⇠ 8—21 h

2024 March 26

C-2

0.31 km

⇠ 9—23 h2024 April 20

C-3

0.50 km⇠ 11—0 h

2024 May 10

C-4

0.78 km⇠ 12—2 h

0.035

2024 May 31

C-5

1.4 km

⇠ 13—4 h

0.63

0.47

2024 June 23

C-6

2.5 km

⇠ 15—6 h

0.046

0.033

0.024

2024 July 28

C-5

1.4 km

⇠ 17—7 h

0.75

0.56

0.40

0.30

2024 August 18

C-4

0.78 km⇠ 19—8 h

0.042

0.028

0.021

0.015

0.011

2024 September 10

C-3

0.50 km⇠ 20—9 h

0.62

0.41

0.31

0.22

Lmin
7-m

C-1

C-2

C-3

C-4

C-5

C-6

C-7

C-8

0.16
Table 3: Planned 12-m Array Configuration Schedule for Cycle 10. Configuration properties are give
Table A-1: Angular Resolution (✓res ) and maximum recoverable scale (✓M RS ) values for diﬀerent 7-m Array
Section A.2.
and 12-m Array configurations are shown for one representative frequency in each ALMA receiver band. The
value of ✓is computed using the 5th percentile baseline (L05) from Table 7.2 and Equation 7.6 of the