Cycle 8, 9 science operations
and Cycle 10 prospects
in addition to Alvaro’s report

Misato Fukagawa
East Asia ALMA Regional Center
21st December 2022

2023/1/19

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Before we start… about discussion session
Discussion today from 14:451. Any questions regarding the talks, feedback in general from users
on the ALMA operations
2. Data processing current and future: Outcome of the previous
surveys, additional comments from users- Are you fine with no weblogs or QA2 reports?

“We have started to work on the implementation of WSU.”

2023/1/19

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Role of the ALMA Regional Centers (ARCs)Joint ALMA Observatory

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

ARC provide support for users in the respective regions so thatthey can concentrate on observing proposals and data analysis.
2023/1/19

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East Asia ARC

Central office is at NAOJ Mitaka:• Core functions: Agreed on internationally• Enhanced functions: Flexibly planned andexecuted in each ARC
 Native language suppose Realization of users’ demands

Two nodes in Taiwan and Korea:

User support optimized to the individual regions inaddition to the core functions of the ARC

EU has several nodes in
addition to the central officeat ESO, Garching.

https://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/alma/arc.html
2023/1/19• “Executive”: Region at the proposal submission,
related to the observing time allocation• “Preferred ARC”: Region to support the user(can change depending on the change of user’saffiliation)

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Working as “one ALMA” on daily basis• Development of the single-dish part of
the Pipeline, single-dish part of CASA• QA2, QA3, and data processing tools• Archive, Helpdesk, Improvements for
Phase 2 generation, Observing Tool,Scheduling, Science Portal etc.
• Contribution to commissioning of new
observing capabilities, to preparationsof offering the new modes (polarization,long-baseline high-freq, Solar, TPrelated, ACA spectrometer, Band 1)• Contribution in the WG to investigate
the algorithm for data combination (TP,7 m, 12 m)• Working on regional user-support items

2023/1/19

Each management team, Subsystem
and working group basically consistsof representatives from all the regionsof ALMA.
5East Asia ALMA Regional Center (EA ARC) at NAOJ
• Misato Fukagawa• Hiroshi Nagai• Koichiro Nakanishi• Shun Ishii• Patricio Sanhueza• Jorge Zavala• Toshiki Saito• Yu-Ting Wu• Sarolta Zahorecz• Gianni Cataldi

2023/1/19• Masumi Shimojo• Satoko Takahashi• Xiaoyang Chen
• Andrea Silva• Yu Cheng• Toshinobu Takagi• Atsushi Miyazaki• Yoshihiko Yamada• Mika Konuma• Takuma Izumi

CASA Users Committee:
Yoshimasa Watanabe-sanfrom Japan

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Receiving inputs/feedback from users

Two paths

https://www.almaobservatory.org/en/about-alma/thepeople/the-alma-committees/asac-members-list/• Regional/ALMA ScienceAdvisory Committees

 Working on the charges
by the Board.
Recommendations andadvice to the Board on
various issues including
future science capabilities,
improvements inoperations• Various tools/opportunities

Note: ALMA also deeply involves thecommunity in the developments.

2023/1/19

ALMA Science Advisory Committee

https://www.almaobservatory.org/en/aboutalma/the-people/the-alma-board/

Alvaro Gonzalez

Teams:Project Manager

Engineering

Development Computing

Operations Science

EA science community, Japanese SAC/EA SAC

EPO

https://alma-telescope.jp/en/structure

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Working as “one ALMA” on daily basis
Many people support the various
necessary activities including softwaredevelopment, repair and maintenanceof telescopes and instruments, and awide variety of other tasks to produce
the exciting science results.
8Cycle 8 and 9 operations
Alvaro’s talk covered• Cycle 8 data acquisition on the 12m Array was the 2nd highest in ALMA
history• Cycle 8 data processing had excellent pipelined data KPIs (50% of datasets
were delivered within 10 days)• Cycle 9 data acquisition was ahead of target at the time of the cyberattackat the end of October

2023/1/19

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Cycle 9

Recovery to science observations• Cycle 9: ALMA has resumed performing PI science observations following
the cyberattack. The end-to-end data acquisition and processing workflow
and software were successfully re-tested prior to the restart. ALMA iscurrently taking observations in configuration C-3. User services are also
now back online, including access to ALMA user profiles, SnooPI, and theCycle 9 DDT submission server.
• Most compact configurations (C-1 and C-2) will not be visited again inCycle 9. Some Scheduling Blocks (SBs) requiring configuration C-2 werealready observed in the days prior to the cyberattack. Projects with SBs in
nominal configurations C-1 and C-2 that can still be observed inconfiguration C-3 will remain in the observing queue. As per usual ALMA
policy, incomplete Cycle 9 Grade A projects will carry over into Cycle 10.
• Regarding Cycle 10, due to the disruption caused by the cyberattack, theCycle 10 pre-announcement will now be issued in the week of January 16.

10Cycle 10

Joint Proposal agreements for JWST, VLA, and the VLT• Joint Proposals are dedicated to scientific projects that require
observations with two or more observatories to achieve their scientificgoals. A Joint Proposal is submitted to a single observatory for scientificpeer review, which allows one observatory to award observing time on
multiple telescopes.
• For each ALMA cycle, starting in Cycle 10, ALMA will be able to allocate up
to 115 hours of JWST time, up to 50 hours on the VLT, and up to 5% of theavailable time on the VLA.
• JWST will be able to allocate up to 115 hours of ALMA time (on each of the 12m, 7-m, and Total Power Arrays) per cycle starting with JWST Cycle 2 (with thecall for proposals released in November 2022), VLA and VLT will each be able toallocate up to 50 h of ALMA time per year starting with Semester 2023B for theVLA (with the call for proposals released in January 2023) and Period 112 for theVLT (with the call for proposals released in February 2023).

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Pre-announcement for Cycle 10• The pre-announcement in January provides
you a plan to assist the early proposalplanning.
• Please wait for the pre-announcement on theplan for Cycle 10, e.g., which observing
modes will be newly available.
Please check the preannouncement and further
updates in the Science Portal.

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Note on the scheduling• Note on the scheduling• Users do not have to care about
the antenna configurations inOT. The scheduling is done
based on the requested angularresolution.
• What is the min/max angularresolution for the scheduling
block?
Please see the Proposer’s Guide(at the proposal planning stage)
about the “range”
You can check in SnooPI. You
can also check in the Phase 2part in the OT.

2023/1/19

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Regional support

User Support

Taiwan node  Yu-Nung’s talk
Korea node  Jihyun’s talkOur goal: To improve the scientific productivity with ALMA in the EA community
Collect users’ voices andstatistics• User surveys (archive, user endto-end experience)• Conversations in meetings• Interviews

Provide support/improve usabilityof ALMA
• Improvements of Archive, OT…
• Workshops, tutorials• Enhanced services• Budgetary support forpublication• …

Regional support

User Support• Calibrated MS delivery• We offer this service for data in all
the cycles (but Cycle 0 where you
can get the calibrated MS from theArchive)• Japanese material• Website, textbook for data reduction• ALMA-J users email list

• Any ALMA users can join

• Items from surveys, comments
received in Users Meeting andconversations

2023/1/19

Supplemental website

https://www2.nao.ac.jp/~eaarc/DATARED/index.html

You can get a template torequest calibrated MS
Next set of examples will
come (Jupyter Notebook)
The chatbot will also guide you.

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Regional support

User Support

NAOJ news- Data reduction tutorials for users in Japan Supplemental website
https://www2.nao.ac.jp/~eaarc/DATARED/index.html- Recent ones
- November 2, 5 in 2021: Intermediate…or, you can google withlevel course (imaging), fully virtual“アルマデータ解析講習会”
using Zoon
- July 5 and 7 in 2022: Basic-level course,
fully virtual- February 27, 28 in 2023: Intermediatelevel course, face-to-face is planned

2023/1/19

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Regional support

Publication support• Publication Support program• Motivation
1. Improving the scientific productivity,including papers with archival data
2. Advertising science results in theinternational community• Publication fee, English editing fee, conference
registration fee, Images in PR led by universities

Please see here for details• Based on inputs in the UM, JSAC, and discussion inthe project• 1st authors who include the affiliation in Japan,and who submitted (will surely submit forEnglish editing) papers with ALMA data• Post-COVID-19 (from FY2023?):
conference/colloquium abroad with oralpresentations (not for posters)
2023/1/19

Quality of science is good.
Internationalization will be
important in particular forthe young generation.

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Science Portal – almost everything is here
https://almascience.nao.ac.jp/

Registration is necessary to propose
observations, getting data under theproprietary period

ALMA Science Archive

2023/1/19

Helpdesk, knowledgebase
Observing Tool

Project status tracking tool18

Archive updates/features

ALMA Science Archive in the Request Handler page

① Search the data as usual“Object type” search ispossible.

Previews of images/spectra,
automatic search for similar proposals,
etc. are available with a mouse over.

2023/1/19② After choosing the data,
click this for checking data andrequesting data download. TheIf you want to use
new window includes previews
the previous typeand links
to the CARTA viewer.
of request page,https://sites.google.com/inaf.it/ari-l
click “Explore anddownload inlegacy system” at
the upper-rightcorner.
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Archive updates/features

ALMA Science Archive in the Request Handler pageIn the legacy system:

Click the link icon to
CARTA as a viewer

A new webpage automatically
opens in your browser! (Youdo not have to install CARTAdesktop version).

Open the file tree byclicking ▶
https://sites.google.com/inaf.it/ari-l

You can check and analyze the images/cubes
without downloading the data to your local
disk. (e.g., you can generate and immediately
check moment maps in CARTA)

2023/1/19

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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 thepackage name “ari_l”.
ARI-L images are also inthe JVO archive in NAOJ

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

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

2023/1/1921

What type of support would work for you?
• Getting ALMA time
• Using archive data
• Data accessibility• Data reduction• Scientific Analysis• Strengthen the research group2023/1/1922

Discussion, Q&A
 Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade Development efforts
 Proposal review system User support

2023/1/1923

Recalling past surveys/interviews

User End-to-End Experience Survey resultsPurposeTo identify the main issues that prevent the best
ALMA user experienceSurvey period
Conferences/events with ALMA users in 2019 andearly 2020
Thank you for your contribution!
Results
Total 106 responses. Almost all have used ALMA.
“Imaging of the data” and “Writing a good proposal”
are the most challenging aspects, followed by “Datasize”, “Interferometry”, “Interpreting the data”.
Some of the top priority items have already been
implemented. e.g., archive previews, improved
documentation.
2023/1/19

What are the two most challenging
aspects of using ALMA according to yourexperience?

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Recalling past surveys/interviews

Interview results

Some items have beenimplemented already,and some are waitingfor discussion orimplementation.

Recalling past surveys/interviews

Interview results

Some items have been implemented already, and some are waiting for discussion/ implementation.

• Users reported difficulties following thedevelopment of the various CASA versions,
updates and bug fixes, and also difficulties withmaintaining various CASA versions on theircomputers.
• Remote, centralized, user-initiated dataprocessing would circumvent the need for users
to keep up with CASA versioning, to allow users
accessing powerful computers, and to further
promote archival science.
• …

Summary has been published in theESO messenger article.
https://www.eso.org/sci/publications/m
essenger/archive/no.186mar22/messenger-no186-20-24.pdf

EA ALMA Development WS in the Archive
Future of Science Archive, held in March 2022

Some points from the WS draft report:• Astronomer will not be able to investigate data in2030. Observatory’s responsibility will increase.
• Survey result: Imaging of the data is morechallenging than writing a successful proposal.
• Quick access to calibrated MS will expedite science
analysis.
• Catalogue for molecular inventories, catalogues
for continuum sources. Product images withdifferent weight options, quick line identification,
etc.

Carpenter et al. (2022)• Survey project creates a lot of data. Efficient data discovery is the key to synergy between opt/IR andALMA. VO: Capability to search related data observed by the other telescope• HSC+PFS science platform: No need to download data. Processing is done on remote science
platform. Provides pipeline processed data. No raw data are available (~100 TB for raw+PL
intermediate products)
2023/1/1927

Data processing current and future• What data products do you need?

• Have you checked the weblogs or QA2 reports?

2023/1/1928