ESO - EU ARC Newsletter May 2025

Welcome to the European ALMA Regional Centre Newsletter!

This monthly newsletter is a compilation of recent European ALMA Regional Centre news and announcements, showcasing an exciting ALMA science result by European colleagues. Every month, you can learn an interesting ALMA fact in "Did you know" and give your opinion about a particular ALMA matter in the "Poll of the month".

European ARC News and Announcements

	Job opening for ALMA Project Scientist at ESO Garching 28 May 2025: ESO Garching is looking for a scientist with expertise in instrumentation for submillimetre astronomy or related fields. The ESO ALMA Project Scientist will support the development of the various upgrade development studies and projects of the ALMA Observatory which are an integral part of its long-term life. They will be primarily responsible for the definition of the scientific capabilities of several ALMA upgrade projects and follow-up of the development and construction phases of such projects. See the announcement on the ESO Recruitment Portal.
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	Call for Proposals for ALMA Development Studies 28 May 2025: ESO is pleased to announce the Call for Proposals (CfP) for development studies for ALMA upgrades, with a deadline for proposal submission on Wednesday 27 August 2025 at 11:00am CEST. Interested institutes should register on the In-Tend portal and express interest in the ALMA Development Studies 2025 with reference FCFP-129429-AMA. The specific focus of this call includes the relevance to the implementation of the ALMA Development Roadmap priorities, and particularly the development of new receiver components allowing an expansion to 4x the current IF bandwidth, as well as software initiatives that enable and maximize the science output of the Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade.
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	I-TRAIN #25: The ALMA UV coverage assessment tool (assess_ms 3.0) 25 May 2025: The European ARC Network invites users to a presentation on the first public release of the ALMA uv coverage assessment tool "assess_ms" on 13 June, 11:00 CEST (Zoom link).
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Science Highlight

exoALMA Large Programme drops first results in 17-paper splash

12CO (J=3-2) integrated line emission for the fifteen protoplanetary discs in the exoALMA Large Programme (Teague et al. 2025).
exoALMA is an ALMA Large Programme to obtain high spatial and spectral resolution imagimg of fifteen protoplanetary discs in 12CO (J=3-2), 13CO (J=3-2) and CS (J=7-6). The purpose of this programme is to search for still-forming planets embedded in their parental protoplanetary disks through their influence on the dynamics of the surround gas. In April, the collaboration published seventeen papers presenting their first results from these data. These papers appear in a Focus Issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The results include kinematic modelling, investigation of kinematics substructures, sophisticated image forward-modelling, physical and chemical modelling of the gas, and comparison with hydrodynamical simulations, among other things. Teague et al. "exoALMA I. Science Goals, Project Design and Data Products" Loomis et al. "exoALMA II: Data Calibration and Imaging Pipeline" Izquierdo et al. "exoALMA III: Line-intensity Modeling and System Property Extraction from Protoplanetary Disks" Curone et al. "exoALMA IV: Substructures, Asymmetries, and the Faint Outer Disk in Continuum Emission" Galloway-Sprietsma et al. "exoALMA V: Gaseous Emission Surfaces and Temperature Structures" Stadler et al. "exoALMA. VI. Rotating under Pressure: Rotation curves, azimuthal velocity substructures, and pressure variations" Bae et al. "exoALMA VII: Benchmarking Hydrodynamics and Radiative Transfer Codes" Hilder et al. "exoALMA. VIII. Probabilistic Moment Maps and Data Products using Non-parametric Linear Models" Zawadski et al. "exoALMA IX: Regularized Maximum Likelihood Imaging of Non-Keplerian Features" Pinte et al. "exoALMA. X. channel maps reveal complex 12CO abundance distributions and a variety of kinematic structures with evidence for embedded planets" Gardner et al. "exoALMA XI: ALMA Observations and Hydrodynamic Models of LkCa 15: Implications for Planetary Mass Companions in the Dust Continuum Cavity" Longarini et al. "exoALMA XII: Weighing and sizing exoALMA disks with rotation curve modelling" Trapman et al. "exoALMA XIII. gas masses from N2H+ and C18O: a comparison of protoplanetary gas disk mass measurement techniques" Yoshida et al. "exoALMA XIV. Gas Surface Densities in the RX J1604.3-2130 A Disk from Pressure-broadened CO Line Wings" Rosotti et al. "exoALMA XV: Interpreting the height of CO emission layer" Barraza-Alfaro et al. "exoALMA XVI. Predicting Signatures of Large-scale Turbulence in Protoplanetary Disks" Wolfer et al. "exoALMA XVII. Characterizing the Gas Dynamics around Dust Asymmetries"

ALMA poll of the month

This poll is completely anonymous!

I read other reviewers' comments and usually change my rankings

I read other reviewers' comments but usually don't change my rankings

I don't read other reviewers' comments but usually change my rankings

I don't read other reviewers' comments and usually don't change my rankings

Results from April's poll, "Did you use AI or large language models (e.g. ChatGPT) to help you write your ALMA proposal?"

Survey results

Did you know?

ALMA produces QA0+ reports for your observations shortly after they are taken following a rudimentary calibration and quick-look imaging. You can view these reports on SnooPI.

If you would like to contribute an ALMA science highlight, please contact the newsletter editor at Hannah.Stacey@eso.org.

European ARC News and Announcements

Job opening for ALMA Project Scientist at ESO Garching

Call for Proposals for ALMA Development Studies

I-TRAIN #25: The ALMA UV coverage assessment tool (assess_ms 3.0)