Restart of ALMA Cycle 9 observations and Cycle 10 pre-announcement status

19 December, 2022

Dear colleagues,

Regarding Cycle 9, we are happy to announce that 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 is currently taking observations in configuration C-3. User services are also now back online, including access to ALMA user profiles, SnooPI, and the Cycle 9 DDT submission server.

As previously announced, ALMA’s most compact configurations (C-1 and C-2) will not be visited again in Cycle 9. Some Scheduling Blocks (SBs) requiring configuration C-2 were already observed in the days prior to the cyberattack. Projects with SBs in nominal configurations C-1 and C-2 that can still be observed in configuration 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, the Cycle 10 pre-announcement will now be issued in the week of January 16.

For any comments or concerns, please contact your local ALMA Regional Centre (ARC) via the ALMA Helpdesk at https://help.almascience.org/.