Upcoming Events

Register: ALMA Proposal Preparation Webinar
April 02, 2025 | Online

Contents of the Fermi Bubbles at Green Bank Observatory
May 4-7, 2025 | Green Bank, WV

Cosmic Horizons: AI-Powered Insights
May 6-8, 2025 | Austin, Texas

International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy
June 23-27, 2025 | Urbana-Champaign, IL

2025 Jansky Lectureship - Call for Nominations

Anthony Remijan (NRAO)

The Karl G. Jansky Lectureship is an honor established by the trustees of Associated Universities, Inc., to recognize outstanding contributions to the advancement of radio astronomy. First awarded in 1966, it is named in honor of the man who, in 1932, first detected radio waves from a cosmic source. Karl Jansky's discovery of radio waves from the central region of our Milky Way Galaxy started the science of radio astronomy.

The 2025 Jansky Lecturer will have made significant contributions related to radio astronomy, and will promote the appreciation of the science of radio astronomy through public lectures at the NRAO and GBO sites. A demonstrated ability to engage a wide audience will be a factor in determining the awardee. Visit the Jansky Lectureship website for a list of the previous recipients of this prestigious award.

Additional information, including the nomination and selection process, is available online.

Nominations for the 2025 award should be concise (~1 page) and address both the nominee's contribution to the advancement of radio astronomy and their potential to increase public appreciation through the Jansky Lecture.

Nominations should be sent to JJ Burns by April 25, 2025.

NRAO and GBO scientific staff will be given an opportunity to vote on nominations received and the results will be included in the recommendation to the NRAO Director.

The NRAO Doctoral Dissertation Award

NRAO/AUI has established “The NRAO Doctoral Dissertation Award” to be given each year to a recent recipient of a doctoral degree from any recognized degree granting institution in the United States.

The NRAO Award, which will be based on new radio astronomy data obtained at any facility operated or jointly operated by a U.S. based institution, will be given each year. To be eligible, the applicant must have successfully defended their dissertation during the calendar year of the Award. Applications will be evaluated on the importance of the dissertation contribution to science, originality of the investigation, and independence of the dissertation research. If, in the opinion of the committee, in any given year, none of the dissertations are sufficiently meritorious, the award will not be given in that year.

Candidates will be expected to apply for the award no later than December 15 of the year in question. Applicants should apply by e-mail briefly describing their dissertation, the date of their successful dissertation defense, the date of the degree award, and the name and contact information of their primary dissertation supervisor, all sent to the email account NRAOPhdAward@nrao.edu. A copy of the dissertation as a PDF file should be sent by e-mail to the same address or made available via a link given in the application e-mail. Published papers, papers in press, or portions thereof, based on the dissertation research, may accompany the application. Verification of the successful dissertation defense and statement that the applicant has successfully completed all university requirements for the Ph.D. should be sent directly by the appropriate university authority to NRAOPhdAward@nrao.edu. No other reference letters will be accepted.

The Doctoral Dissertation Award will be available to degree recipients of any nationality and will consist of $1,500, a framed certificate, a dinner with NRAO scientific staff, and an invitation to give a colloquium at the NRAO offices located in Charlottesville, VA. The Award winner will be announced in March following the year of the award.

Science Spotlight: Using VLASS to Find Gravitationally Lensed Radio AGN

Michael Martinez (University of Wisconsin, Madison)

Figure: VLA 10GHz images of four radio-loud strong gravitational lenses. The contours of the VLASS 3GHz data used to identify these targets are shown in green, and the Gaia positions of the optical lensed image counterparts are shown in red. The top-left system's lens galaxy is also detected in the VLA data and its optical position is marked with a "G". Image taken from Martinez et al. 2025.

One of the most pressing problems in astrophysics today is the microscopic nature of dark matter, which makes up 85% of the mass in the universe. By simulating structure formation with different dark matter models, we can predict how microscopic properties of dark matter affect the macroscopic distribution of matter, allowing us to constrain the former by observing the latter. One such probe is via strong gravitational lensing, where a massive foreground object splits a background source’s light into multiple images. By examining astrometric and/or flux-ratio anomalies between multiple images, we can infer the abundance and properties of intervening dark matter clumps and thereby constrain the properties of dark matter itself.

My research aims to expand the sample of strong gravitational lenses at radio wavelengths that can be used for testing dark matter models. To do so, I look for counterparts to known optical gravitational lenses in the VLA Sky Survey (VLASS) and follow them up with dedicated VLA observations. This multiwavelength strategy allows efficient selection of candidate strong lenses that are sufficiently bright at radio wavelengths for detailed characterization.

My recent work (Martinez et al. 2025) presents the pilot study of this approach, where I identified 4 new radio lenses. More recently, I’ve been refining my method by using stacks of the VLASS quick-look images for greater sensitivity in radio. An ongoing follow-up campaign with VLA A-config for an expanded set of candidates has so far yielded 5 additional radio lenses. These new lenses will be considered for VLBI follow-up for dark matter studies, and can also inform us about the properties of radio galaxies at higher redshift.

Would you like your science featured in the NRAO Science Newsletter? Email the editor Brian Kent with your recent science publications!

Dynamic Radio Interference Finding Tool (DRIFT) Development

D. Pattinson, Spectrum Software Engineer and A. Lawson, RFI Data Analyst (VLA/VLBA)

Figure above: Early plots from DRIFT's prototype. Each panel shows a number of VLA, X-band RFI Sweep observations for June 2024. Left plot displays these data in a typical spectrum style format, and the right plot in a typical waterfall style format. With visualization from DRIFT, we are able to easily see that something interesting happened over the VLA on June 27th (red in the left spectra; top row in waterfall plot). We are reasonably confident that the cause of this event were TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X, a pair of satellites used for mapping Earth's terrain.

Historically, each of the NRAO sites conducted their own RFI monitoring observations and had site specific methods of processing their respective data. Spectrum Management is currently seeking to unify the ways these data are presented to staff and users. We hope to create a 'one stop shop' for RFI data visualization by having multiple sites/instruments integrated into a single web-based interface. Grounded in the fundamental RFI GUI development work done at GBO in recent years, the Dynamic Radio Interference Finding Tool (DRIFT) will provide this interface.

The fundamental idea is that the individual sites will upload their own data to DRIFT which will then be available for visualization in typical ways: spectrum plots, waterfall plots, etc. The team also hopes to include features that will allow for interesting ways to see how the RFI environments change over time. At launch, DRIFT will likely only contain GBT and VLA data, but the plan is to expand it to other instruments such as: the VLBA, CHIME, ASM-2, etc. We are currently a few months into the project and initial results and demos are looking promising. We hope to share more in the coming months as the project matures!

ALMA Primer Video Series - New Releases

Gerald Schieven (NRC Herzberg, ALMA-NAASC)

The ALMA Primer Instructional Video series, which can be found on the Science Portal, is designed to provide a basic introduction to radio interferometry, calibration, imaging, and other topics in short (5-10 minute), easy-to-digest segments. As a work in progress, new videos are released periodically. Recent videos include a brief introduction to how ALMA's heterodyne receivers work, and a series explaining sidebands, basebands and spectral windows, with practical examples on tuning setups (Video 1; Video 2). A new video on Primary Beams and Field-of-View is under production, and is expected to be released by April 2025.

Other videos in the series include an Introduction to Radio Interferometry, Calibration, CLEAN, and much more. Subscribe to the ALMA Primer Video Series YouTube channel to be alerted to new videos as they are released.

We are always looking for ideas for new videos, and especially looking for people who would like to help with script generation, animation, and narration. If you have an idea or would like to join the Primer Video Working Group (at any level of effort), please contact Gerald Schieven.

ALMA News

Al Wootten (NRAO/NAASC)

Hidden Cosmic Fuel Tank Found in Infant Galaxy Cluster Surprise ALMA-APEX discovery (led by Dazhi Zhou of the University of British Columbia) reveals diffuse molecular gas in galaxy protocluster SPT2349-56 - 75% more than previously detected - extending its star formation timeline to 400 million years. Reference: arXiv:2412.17980. Read the press release. (Image: MPIfR/N.Sulzenauer)

ALMA Status

The array is currently in configuration, C-5, with 1.4 km baselines and a 0.6" beam. In late April the expansion of the array to configuration C-6 with 2.5 km baselines and a beam of 0.3" is planned.

Cycle 12 Call for Proposals

Submission Deadline: 15:00 UTC 24 April 2025

The Cycle 12 Call for Proposals is now open. The observatory has a few new features, including the following:

• Full polarization single field interferometry in Band 1 on the 7-m Array.
• Improvements in the VLBI flux density thresholds for active phasing targets.
• EHT multi-epoch monitoring in Band 6 spanning March through May.
• Inclusion of Band-to-band (B2B) calibration observations in Large Programs.

For this CfP, ALMA anticipates having 4300 hours of approved science time on each of the 12-m, 7-m, and the Total Power arrays. Together, the 7-m Array and Total Power Array form the Atacama Compact Array (ACA), also known as the Morita Array. Observations that are strongly encouraged include:

• ACA standalone observations, especially in the LST range of 20h to 1h.
• High frequency (Band 8, 9, or 10) observations in any configuration.
• Low frequency (Band 1, 3, or 4) observations at long baselines (C-7 and C-8 configurations).

The deadline for proposal submission is 15:00 UTC on Thursday, 24 April 2025. The observations will be scheduled between October 2025 and September 2026.

ALMA Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU)

The scope of the ALMA WSU Program includes upgrading or replacing most of the observatory's hardware elements, including key receivers, signal chain components and the correlator. The new correlator - the Advanced Technology ALMA Correlator (ATAC) will be installed in the new correlator room now in construction (OCRO) at the ALMA Operations Support Facility in Chile, ATAC will enable instantaneous correlation of the new expanded bandwidth (up to at least 16 GHz per polarization for all receivers), at any spectral resolution, corresponding to processing of up to 1.2 million spectral channels.

As part of the scope of ATAC, a test facility (IDTF) is being prepared at the NRAO Central Development Laboratory in Charlottesville (shown) to do the initial integration of ATAC components. IDTF will also be used for a signal-chain end-to-end test which is currently being defined. Racks have recently been installed that allow for such tests (see above photo).

ALMA Proposal Preparation Webinar and Workshops

ALMA Ambassadors are organizing a webinar on April 2 at 2pm Eastern, in preparation for the Cycle 12 proposal deadline (24 April 2025). This webinar will provide an overview of the basics of ALMA, new capabilities in Cycle 12, and proposal preparation. The webinar will be followed by a brief Q&A session.

During the Spring of 2025, ALMA Ambassadors are hosting Cycle 12 proposal preparation workshops at institutes across North America and in Chile. Workshops can be hybrid and include some virtual component. Information on these events may be provided in the table below.

ALMA/NAASC Meetings and Conferences

Science with strong lensing, ALMA and next generation radio interferometry
May 6-9, 2005 - NRAO Charlottesville

Thousands of strongly lensed galaxies have been discovered in the past 5-10 years using multi-wavelength approaches, offering magnified views into the hearts of active galaxies in the early Universe. This meeting will include a mix of discussions, talks and careful inspection of images and techniques to make the most out of ALMA observations of strongly lensed galaxies, as these objects offer the only means to access 10-100s pc scale at z>1.The workshop will be led by the Planck All-Sky Survey to Analyze Gravitationally-lensed Extreme Starbursts (PASSAGES) international collaboration, including experts who have closely examined strongly lensed systems using ALMA and other radio interferometers. We aim to enable a better understanding of how to systematically analyze the conditions of star formation at high redshift in the next generation of ALMA.

More info is on the PASSAGES Collaboration webpage. Workshop participation submission deadline is April 9, 2025.

Infrared Fine-Structure Lines Workshop

This 4-day conference will take place June 10 - 13, 2025 in the Science Laboratory Center at WSU in Winona, Minnesota, USA. The meeting will cover all topics related to the use of the infrared fine-structure lines as probes of the interstellar medium and properties of galaxies. Abstract submission is closed. Registration closes May 19, 2025. For more information please see the workshop announcement.

Identifying and Bridging Gaps in Laboratory Astrophysics

A 2-day workshop, "Identifying and Bridging Gaps in Laboratory Astrophysics", will be held June 7-8, 2025, ahead of the Summer AAS meeting in Anchorage, AK. This workshop directly addresses a key recommendation from the Laboratory Astrophysics Task Force (LATF) convened by the AAAC in response to the Astro2020 Decadal Survey. Please use this form to express your interest in participating in this workshop (even if you have ve already registered for the AAS meeting and workshop).

Third North America-Taiwan joint ALMA Science Workshop

The third North America-Taiwan joint ALMA Science Workshop, will occur June 16-20, 2025 at ASIAA. The registration is open now through Apr 8, 2025. This event will be an opportunity to present new ALMA scientific results in all scientific topics, with specific highlights on Band 1 and Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU) science opportunities.

International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy (ISMS)

Abstract submission is now closed. Reduced Registration (and dorms) deadline: March 15 - May 15; Full-Price Registration (and dorms) Begins: May 16

The ISMS is the leading annual conference in this dynamic and interdisciplinary field, bringing together experts for a unique blend of plenary talks from world-renowned leaders and parallel sessions featuring shorter presentations, many given by graduate students. The symposium fosters a highly collaborative and collegial environment, offering numerous opportunities for both formal and informal interactions. To encourage participation, registration and housing costs remain exceptionally low compared to similar conferences, making it possible for entire research groups to attend. In fact, many senior researchers in the field delivered their first-ever conference presentation at ISMS, benefiting from its welcoming and supportive audience.

The 78th ISMS takes place June 23-27, 2025, in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, and will feature the ALMA/NGVLA-themed mini-symposium: "Astrochemistry - Laboratory, Computations, and Observations." Featured invited speakers include Roman Motiyenko (Université de Lille), Jenny Bergner (UC Berkeley), Jérôme Loreau (KU Leuven), Romane Le Gal (IRAP), Ilsa Cooke (University of British Columbia), Audrey Coutens (IRAP), and Xander Thelen (Caltech).

ngVLA Project News

Eric Murphy (NRAO)

Comments Welcomed on VLA+VLBA to ngVLA Transition

An external and international committee, the Transition Advisory Group (TAG), was asked to make recommendations regarding option concepts for a VLA/VLBA to ngVLA transition. In mid-January, the TAG posted its draft report and announced the posting during a session at the AAS 245 Winter meeting. Comments were sought from the 70+ session participants. The TAG is now collecting comments from the broader community until mid-April. Comments may be emailed to ngvla-transition-feedback@listmgr.nrao.edu.

ngVLA Science - The Onset of Ionization Feedback in Massive Protostars

Jesús M. Jáquez-Domínguez, Roberto Galván-Madrid, and Carlos Carrasco-González (IRyA - UNAM)

Figure: Synthetic ngVLA observations of free-free continuum and hydrogen recombination-line emission. Left: Cep A HW2 jet model. Right: Ionized disk model around a massive protostar. Adapted from Jáquez-Domínguez et al. (2025).

Massive protostars ionize their immediate surroundings before reaching their final masses, forming ionized jets and disks. These precursors to the better known Ultra Compact HII regions provide crucial insights into the accretion and feedback processes during massive star formation (e.g., Carrasco-González et al. 2021, Galván-Madrid et al. 2023). The ngVLA will revolutionize this field by offering milliarcsecond resolution mapping of their free-free continuum and hydrogen recombination-line emission.

In Jáquez-Domínguez et al. (2025), we present synthetic ngVLA observations demonstrating that the ngVLA will resolve the relevant ionized structures around massive protostars down to resolutions of a few astronomical units at kiloparsec distances (see figure).

Our radiative transfer models of ionized jets and disks were passed through the ngVLA interferometric response using computers acquired through the UNAM-NRAO Memorandum of Understanding for the ngVLA. Our results show that the ngVLA will distinguish between collimated jets and wide-angle winds, resolve their launching regions, and trace their kinematics with unprecedented detail. For the case of ionized disks, the ngVLA will provide direct measurements of rotation curves, enabling determinations of protostellar masses throughout the Galaxy.

With its unparalleled sensitivity and resolution, the ngVLA will open a new window into the study of massive star formation. It will allow astronomers to investigate the late stages of accretion and the earliest stages of ionization feedback, shedding light on how massive stars reach their final masses and influence their surroundings.

Since 2015 the acronym ngVLA has appeared in 1270+ publications indexed in the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System. This article continues a regular feature intended to showcase some of those publications. We are especially interested in showcasing work done by early-career researchers. The collection of showcase articles can be viewed online. Anyone wishing to volunteer to author a feature should contact Joan Wrobel.

Astrochemistry in the Broadband Era Workshop

The astrochemical science that can currently be accomplished with radio facilities is fundamentally limited by narrow spectral bandwidths, but we are about to enter a new era of broadband radio astronomy. ALMA (following the Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade, WSU) and the next-generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) will both deliver unprecedented spectral bandwidths while maintaining exquisite spectral resolution and sensitivity. This data quality will transform the field of astrochemistry, but will also require entirely new approaches to data analysis. This workshop is intended to survey the current state of astrochemistry in this specific context, identify high-priority science that can be achieved in the Broadband Era, and develop a community roadmap for approaching these new data challenges.

The structure of this workshop is somewhat different from a normal meeting with most talk slots geared to setting up the daily group discussions. The program will include:

• "Primer" talks on specific topics given by ngVLA/WSU personnel and/or SOC members.
• Invited outlook talks addressing key opportunities and challenges.
• Focused science talks contributed from a small number of attendees.
• A number of hour-long, moderated and guided group discussion sections on big-picture topics.

The workshop will last the full days Tuesday 21 - Thursday 23 October (a preliminary program is available on the website). Participants should plan to arrive on Monday, 20 October and depart on Friday, 24 October. The workshop will take place at the Portland Regency Hotel and Spa in Portland, Maine. We expect the registration fee for the conference to be ~$375. We have secured lodging blocks at substantially below the seasonal rates for the area. Limited financial support is available to support students who could not otherwise attend.

Abstract Submission and Pre-registration is now open, and closes 1 May. Attendance at the workshop is strictly capped at 110 people due to the capacity of the venue. Once our capacity is reached, we will start a waitlist. Notification of acceptances and decisions on financial support will be made by ~15 May, with full registration due ~1 June. Further details, as well as abstract submission and pre-registration, are available on the conference website at go.nrao.edu/broadband25.

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From the Archives

Ellen Bouton

In summer 2012, the 22nd and final North American ALMA Front End component completed its preliminary acceptance in-house at the Front End Integration Center at the NRAO Technology Center (NTC). Justifiably proud members of NA ALMA Front End Integration Center team are [left to right, standing]: Wendy Harper, John Buchanan, Mike Shannon, Erik Gaines, K. Saini, John Effland, Jack Meadows, Morgan McLeod, Skip Thacker, Joyce Ford. [kneeling]: Matt Chick.

From the Archives is an ongoing series illustrating NRAO and U.S. radio astronomy history via images selected from our collections of individuals' and institutional papers. If readers have images they believe would be of interest to the Archives, please contact Ellen Bouton.