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Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
‘Death Stars’ in Orion Blast Planets before They Even Form
Mar 10, 2014
The Orion Nebula is home to hundreds of young stars and even younger protostars known as proplyds. Many of these nascent systems will go on to develop planets, while others will have their planet-forming dust and gas blasted away by the fierce ultraviolet radiation emitted by massive O-type stars that lurk nearby. (Read more...)
ALMA Cycle 2 Proposals: Submission Statistics & Ranking Timescale
ALMA received 1382 unique proposals by the close of the Cycle 2 submission process on 5 December, compared to 1131 in Cycle 1 and 919 in cycle 0; for each cycle ALMA has seen a healthy increase of 22%. The total time requested was 7314 hours for the array of 12m telescopes; 3327 hours were requested for the Atacama Compact Array. A total of 1049 individual PIs and 3408 proposers (PIs and Co-Is from the total registration pool of 5330) were involved in the submitted proposals. The fractions of proposals coming from the three Executives, Chile, and from outside the partnership has likewise remained similar at NA:30%, EU:41%, EA:20%, CL:7%, and 'Outside': 3%.
It is anticipated that about 2000 hours of 12m Array time and a similar amount of Atacama Compact Array time will be available for Cycle 2 projects and high priority projects transferred from Cycle 1. The Cycle 2 proposals will be sorted and sent to the referees over the course of the next weeks. The Review Panels will meet 10-14 March 2014 in London, Ontario, Canada with the final proposal ranking expected in April 2014. A detailed overview of the status of ALMA is available in the December 2013 eNews.
Come and Visit the NAASC
The datasets for all of the observations taken in Cycle 0 have been delivered to PIs. NRAO would like to take this opportunity to remind Cycle 0 and 1 investigators of the services available to assist in the analysis of ALMA data. Investigators who would like to re-process their datasets from the original raw files, or who would like advice on analyzing the calibrated datasets they have received, are welcomed to visit. In Charlottesville, financial support is available for two visitors from each project (if the second visitor is a student); in Victoria, visits are encouraged although no financial support is possible. In instances where the data reduction and analysis questions are few or minor, investigators may elect to interact with staff via phone or video connection, or by submitting Helpdesk queries any time of the year at https://help.almascience.org/ .
Feedback on ALMA data analysis tools is greatly appreciated. Please communicate any obstacles encountered in the path from data delivery to publication by submitting a Helpdesk ticket. In particular, has a lack of computing resources, software for analysis, visualization, plotting, or other "tools" proven to be a difficulty? As NRAO moves forward, it will be useful to our planning to understand current gaps in the path from telescope to scientific results. NRAO thanks you for your participation in ALMA Early Science, we look forward to hearing from you and providing assistance as you prepare Cycle 2 proposals.
