Oxygen in Earth’s Higher Atmosphere - First detection of the atomic 18O isotope in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere of Earth

In a new experiment, Helmut Wiesemeyer from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn/Germany and his colleagues have measured the 18O fraction of the upper mesosphere/lower thermosphere for the first time. They used the GREAT receiver aboard the airborne observatory SOFIA and found that the upper atmosphere has an 18O fraction close to that of the lower atmosphere.

Image: © Compilation: Helmut Wiesemeyer, created from: photo of atmospheric layers (NASA), SOFIA model (Stéphane Guisard & NIESYTO design), atomic nuclei (Robert Simmon, NASA GSFC); The higher layers of the Earth’s atmosphere. SOFIA observations were performed in the stratosphere at 13 to 14 km above the surface. The spectrum shows the column densities of oxygen lines of 16O and the heavier isotope 18O which were detected in absorption against the moon in the upper mesosphere and lower thermosphere.  

Newsletter of AtLAST published

The February 2023 newsletter of the Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST) project has been issued. 

The ongoing EU-funded design study will deliver, in mid-2024, a full feasibility study that considers the technical, operational, environmental, and scientific challenges of building and operating AtLAST.

Image: © AtLAST

IRAM Telescopes: Call for proposals open

The call is open for observing proposals on IRAM telescopes, both the NOEMA interferometer and the 30-meter telescope, for the summer semester 2023.

For both observatories, the scheduling period is June 01, 2023 to November 30, 2023. The 30-meter tele- scope will be upgraded in Summer 2023 with observations resuming in early October on a shared-risk basis.

Access/funding offered through the ORP (Opticon RadioNet Pilot) project.

Submission deadline: 16 March 2023; 17:00 CET (UT + 1 hour)

100-m Effelsberg radio telescope: Open call for proposals

The call for proposals of the 100-m radio telescope (Effelsberg/DE) of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy is open.

Access/funding is offered through the ORP project.

Submission deadline: 01 June 2023 (15:00 UT)

Image: © N. Tacken (MPIfR)

ALMA Cycle 10 Pre-Announcement

A Call for Proposals (CfP) with detailed information on Cycle 10 is anticipated to be issued in April 2023, and the deadline for proposal submission will be in May 2023.  The purpose of this pre-announcement is to highlight aspects of the CfP to assist with early planning.

The anticipated proposal submission deadline for Cycle 10 is 10 May 2023. More here.

European ALMA Regional Centre

The European ALMA Regional Centre (ARC) provides the interface between the ALMA project and the European science community. The ARC is staffed by scientists with expertise in radio astronomy and interferometry and it supports its users throughout the lifetime of a project, from proposal preparation to data analysis. Users that want to visit an ARC node for a face-to-face visit can apply for funding through the ORP project. 

The Westerbork Apertif Long Term Archive (ALTA) offers to the world-wide astronomical community free virtual access to data and scientific products produced from all sky surveys of the Northern sky that will be conducted with the new Apertif frontend of the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), as well as tools to query, further exploit and perform data mining of these products adaptable to diverse research goals. The access/funding offered through the ORP project.

LOFAR Long Term Archive (LTA) is a long-established archive and access facility supporting the international LOFAR telescope. It is currently the largest radio astronomical archive in the world already exceeding 45 PB from LOFAR’s past 10 years of operations. The LTA provides a central and key resource for all observed LOFAR astronomical science programs where the data become public within 12 months of first creation. The access/funding is offered through the ORP project.