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ALMA Data Reduction Training Day: November 5, 2025

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On Wednesday, 5 November 2025, we will host an ALMA Data Reduction Training Day in person in room CE.0.08.

The training will begin at 10:00 AM and continue into the afternoon with coffee breaks and an hour lunch break. The Allegro team will be presenting a series of talks and hands-on activities that cover: how to go from the archive to obtaining calibrated visibilities, a surface-level overview for calibration and self-calibration, using CASA, imaging, and exploring data cubes with CARTA. There will be sufficient time for Question & Answer sessions at the end of each section.

Several of the sessions will include a hands-on component that participants can follow along with. Information on how to connect to the Allegro workstations will be provided prior to the training day to the registered participants.

Register HERE

Program* November 5, 2025
10:00-10:15 Welcome
10:15-10:30 Pascal Keller ALMA data: From the archive to calibrated visibilities
10:30-11:00 Pascal Keller Overview of calibration and self-calibration
11:00-11:15 Coffee break
11:15-11:30 Megan Lewis Introduction to CASA

+ technical setup

11:30-12:15 Łukasz Tychoniec Imaging Part 1
12:15-13:15 Lunch break
13:15-14:00 Łukasz Tychoniec Imaging Part 2
Imaging Part 3
14:00-14:20 Coffee break
14:20-15:30 Megan Lewis Image cubes and CARTA

* Note that this is a rough schedule as we plan to dedicate plenty of time for questions after each session.

List of useful references:

Directions to Leiden Observatory

Note that this is not the old observatory in the center of Leiden. The workshop will occur at the new Faculty of Science building (see image below). Leiden Observatory is located on the 3-4th floors of this building, and the Allegro offices are located on the 4th floor. The event will be held on the ground floor in room CE.0.08.The realization of phase 2 of the Gorlaeus building | Leiden Convention Bureau

ALMA Science Day 2025

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Allegro is delighted to announce that the 2025 edition of the ALMA Science day will take place in Groningen on 2nd December 2025.

This is an ideal opportunity to meet fellow ALMA aficionados and learn about a wide range of ALMA-related science and technology development in the Netherlands.This year’s meeting will feature keynote talks by Nienke van de Marel (Leiden) and Eelco van Kampen (ESO) and contributed talks from you!

We have a limited capacity, so please register as soon as possible here. Registration closes 17 November. There is no registration fee.

Credit: ESO/Y. Beletsky

Allegro to host 2026 ALMA school

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Dates and location for the 2nd European ALMA school announced

Allegro is happy to announce that we will be hosting the 2026 European ALMA school.

The school will be held 26.01.2026-30.01.2026 at Leiden Observatory, and registration will open 1 August. Stay tuned by checking our page here.

This picture of the ALMA antennas on the Chajnantor Plateau, 5000 m above sea level, was taken a few days before the start of ALMA Early Science. Nineteen antennas are on the plateau.

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ALMA Data Reduction Training Day: October 23, 2024

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On Wednesday, October 23, 2024, we will host an ALMA Data Reduction Training Day in person in room CE.0.18 (where the lunch talks are usually held).

The training will begin at 10:00 AM and continue into the afternoon with coffee breaks and an hour lunch break. The Allegro team will be presenting a series of talks that cover the following topics: how to go from the archive to obtaining calibrated visibilities, surface-level overview for calibration and self-calibration, imaging, analysis tools and visualizing data with CARTA. There will be sufficient time for Question & Answer at the end of each talk.

Several of the sessions will include a hands-on component that participants can follow along with. Information on how to connect to the Allegro workstations will be provided prior to the training day to the registered participants.

Program* October 23, 2024
10:00-10:15 Welcome
10:15-1030 Pascal Keller ALMA data: From the archive to calibrated visibilities
10:30-10:45 Pascal Keller Overview of calibration and self-calibration
10:45-11:05 Coffee break
11:05-11:15 Megan Lewis Introduction to CASA + technical setup
11:15-12:15 Joshiwa van Marrewijk Imaging_Allegro2024_p1 Imaging_Allegro2024_p2 Imaging_Allegro2024_p3
12:15-13:15 Lunch break
13:15-14:00 Joshiwa van Marrewijk Imaging_Allegro2024_p1 Imaging_Allegro2024_p2 Imaging_Allegro2024_p3
14:00-14:20 Coffee break
14:20-15:30 Megan Lewis Analysis tools and CARTA

* Note that this is a rough schedule as we plan to dedicate plenty of time for questions after each session.

List of useful references:

Directions to Leiden Observatory

Note that this is not the old observatory in the center of Leiden. The workshop will occur at the new Faculty of Science building (see photo below). Leiden Observatory is located on the 3-4th floors of this building, and the Allegro offices are located on the 4th floor across the room where we will meet: Arcturus, BW.4.34a.

The realization of phase 2 of the Gorlaeus building | Leiden Convention Bureau

Science Highlight: Most distant rotating disc galaxy found

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A team led by Leiden Observatory researchers has discovered the most distant disc galaxy yet observed. The observations were conducted as part of the ALMA Large Program REBELS: Reionization Era Bright Emission Lines Survey, thus the disc galaxy has been dubbed REBELS-25. The galaxy seems as orderly as present-day galaxies, but we see it as it was when the Universe was only 700 million years old. This is surprising because, according to our current understanding of galaxy formation, such early galaxies are expected to appear more chaotic. “According to our understanding of galaxy formation, we expect most early galaxies to be small and messy looking,” says Jacqueline Hodge, an astronomer at Leiden University, and co-author of the study. However, both the structure and the rotation of REBELS-25 were revealed using ALMA data and the galaxy is strongly rotating and orderly.

Current theories suggest that billions of years of evolution must have elapsed for a galaxy to be as orderly as our own Milky Way — a rotating disc with tidy structures like spiral arms. The detection of REBELS-25, however, challenges that timescale.  “Seeing a galaxy with such similarities to our own Milky Way, that is strongly rotation-dominated, challenges our understanding of how quickly galaxies in the early Universe evolve into the orderly galaxies of today’s Cosmos,” says Lucie Rowland, a doctoral student at Leiden University and first author of the study.

REBELS-25 was initially detected in previous observations, also conducted with ALMA, by the same team. At the time, it was an exciting discovery, showing hints of rotation. Toproperly discern the structure and motion of the galaxy, the team performed follow-up observations with ALMA at a higher resolution, which confirmed its record-breaking nature. “ALMA is the only telescope in existence with the sensitivity and resolution to achieve this,” says Renske Smit, a researcher at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK and co-author of the study.

Surprisingly, the data also hinted at more developed features similar to those of the Milky Way, like a central elongated bar and even spiral arms. However, more observations will be needed to confirm this. “Finding further evidence of more evolved structures would be an exciting discovery, as it would be the most distant galaxy with such structures observed to date,” says Rowland.

Staff changes

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Allegro’s newest members are postdocs Pascal Keller and Joshiwa van Marrewijk!

Pascal Keller joined Allegro in May 2024. He did his PhD titled “Investigating the Epoch of Reionisation with Radio Interferometers” at the Cavendish Astrophysics group of the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on developing and applying non-standard analysis techniques to radio interferometric data. He is particularly interested in using calibration-insensitive closure invariants such as the “closure phase” to search for the redshifted 21 cm signal of neutral hydrogen during the Epoch of Reionisation (EoR). As part of his thesis, he applied the “closure phase method” to data from the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization array (HERA), producing robust upper limits on the spatial fluctuations of the EoR signal.

Joshiwa van Marrewijk will join Allegro in October 2024. He did his PhD at ESO in Garching, titled “The birth of cosmic structures as revealed by observations in the (sub-)mm bands”. His research focuses on how galaxies and galaxy clusters form, particularly at two key moments in cosmic history: the epoch of reionization and protoclusters. During his PhD, Joshiwa developed innovative methods to analyse ALMA data in the uv-plane and created a novel simulation tool named maria used for forecasting bolometric single-dish observations and studying phase fluctuations caused by the ever-changing atmosphere.  While his work often reveals the challenges of pushing observations to extreme redshifts, it’s also paving the way for the next generation of (sub-)mm astronomy and provides useful tools to analyse to get the best science out of the observations.

Meanwhile, we said good-bye Dr. Ko-Yun (Monica) Huang this summer. We would like to express our gratitude to Monica for her amazing service at Allegro! We will miss her greatly, and wish her all the best on her new path!

 

Lastly, we are excited that Dr. Violette Impellizzeri will join ASTRON as head of the Astronomy & Operations department. She started her new duties at ASTRON on 1 September 2024, but will still be working at the Allegro ARC Node partially until March 2025, to enable a smooth transition for the new group, new arrivals and daily activities. At ASTRON, Violette will be closely involved in the commissioning efforts for LOFAR2.0, the deployment of the SKA Dutch regional center and astronomy research activities at the institute.

Violette  has been part of ALMA since 2011, when she relocated to the Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) in Chile as a commissioning postdoc and science fellow. Her involvement during the commissioning phase included early VLBI testing, science verification, and the implementation of high-frequency observing techniques, also known as band-to-band phase transfer. As operations commenced in 2014, she assumed the role of an operations astronomer with added responsibilities such as leading the Phase II Group (P2G), serving as a liaison for VLBI activities (VLBI friend of telescope), and heading the Proposal Handling Team (PHT). In October 2020, she joined the Allegro ARC Node in Leiden as the Program Manager, providing assistance to the ALMA community in the Netherlands.

Moving to ASTRON, Violette said she hopes she can help create further synergies and collaborations among our frequency domains in the coming years, as we are living through a transformation with the exciting WSU upgrade matching the ongoing constructions of SKA and the LOFAR 2.0 observatory.

Science Day: November 29, 2024

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Announcing 8th Netherlands ALMA Science Day, Friday November 29, 10:30-16:30!

When: Friday November 29, 10:30-16:30
Where: Leiden Observatory, Gorlaeus Buidling room BE0.08, Einsteinweg 55, Leiden

Allegro is pleased to announce the 8th Netherlands ALMA Science Day, which will take place at Leiden Observatory in our new Gorlaeus building on Friday 29 November in room BE.0.08. We invite all members of the community to present the latest scientific results obtained with ALMA.

During the Science Day, we will have talks related to ALMA technical aspects, news, and outlook, focusing on the changes that the Wide-band Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU) will bring. We will discuss the resources that ALMA observers currently need (and anticipate needing), with a particular emphasis on Allegro’s role in supporting the community in the Netherlands.

Invited speakers include Serena Viti (Leiden; Results of the ALCHEMI Large Program) and Gergo Poppoing (ESO; Status of ALMA and ALMA2030 upgrade). There will also be a discussion session on Allegro’s current and future resources in support of the user community. And we will hear about the ALMA2040 ambitions and how you can contribute in shaping ALMA’s future.

We hope to see many of you at the Science Day!

The schedule can be found below.

 

EAS Meeting

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In July the European ARC network set up a booth at the annual European Astronomical Society (EAS) meeting, where conference participants could pick up a variety of ALMA related stickers, watch an informative video about ALMA and the ARC network, or enjoy a casual chat with one of the ARC representatives. This was a great opportunity for the ARC network to promote its services to the astronomy community and spread excitement about ALMA science and developments.

Updates from the Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade Workshop

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In June ESO hosted a workshop focused on ALMA’s upcoming Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU). The workshop, titled “The promises and challenges of the ALMA Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade”, presented the upgrade and showcased the science that will be enabled in the upcoming years. It was also an opportunity to solicit input from the ALMA community that will be used to inform priorities during the commissioning phase.

In short, the WSU is well-underway and consists of an increase of the instantaneous spectral bandwidth by as much as a factor of four, while retaining full spectral resolution over the entire bandwidth. The result is an increase of the spectral scan speed up to a factor of 50 for the highest spectral resolution. In addition, an upgrade of the full signal chain of ALMA – from the receivers and digitizers, all the way through to the correlated data – will result in increases in sensitivity for all observations.

You can watch a video about the WSU here!