Breaking records: how we surpassed 4,000 hours of observations

Oct 2, 2024 | News | 2 comments

Tags: ALMA

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To know our cosmic origins, we must observe as many hours as possible of the research selected for each cycle. That’s why we are so pleased to have surpassed 4,000 hours during this Cycle 10. The highest number ever observed since we began operations. Our previous record – in Cycle 5 – was 3,787 hours, and so we are approaching the ultimate goal of 4,300 hours per cycle.

“This is a truly outstanding achievement and a testament to the efforts of each of you who have contributed to this milestone,” said Norikazu Mizuno, our ALMA Deputy Director of Operations, on behalf of the entire JAO Operations Team (JOT).

But how hard was it to achieve this record? Juan Cortés, manager of the Program Management Group (PMG), tells us: “The challenges are enormous, going through technical difficulties inherent to an instrument that is observing 330 days a year 24 hours a day, as well as difficulties related to the weather, such as snowstorms and high winds, which stop the observations,” he says.

Reducing downtime is key, and in that line Juan is grateful to the operator, engineering and computing teams for having “minimized downtime due to technical downtime, freeing up about 600 hours of observing time for science. The latter has been crucial to the success of this cycle,” he notes.

Within its data acquisition process, the PMG team works on many crucial activities that explain this new record of observations.
One of them is the weather forecasts that Priscilla Nowajewski, our Data Analyst (PMG), provides through her reports: “No longer viewing weather conditions as a mystery has helped a lot in achieving this goal”. Priscilla explains that planning ahead makes a difference in how we adapt operations to Chajnantor’s extreme weather and get the best quality data possible. “It’s super interesting to see how this challenge has brought us all together,” she maintains.

(In the picture, Priscilla with María Jesús López from Software and Daniela Soto from AOG)

“Every cycle is a new challenge. There are predictable conditions, such as maintenance activities by engineering, and unpredictable ones, such as climatic factors or the cyber-attack that caused us to lose more than a month of observing time, something unprecedented if we discount the pandemic years,” says David Rebolledo, Operations Astronomer of the Array and Operations Performance Group (AOPG).

The AOPG group was created to evaluate, plan and execute activities that seek to make operations within ALMA more efficient and more automated, designing operations and procedures for the long term. From that role, David tells of the constant coordination that the science, engineering and software departments have to give as much observing time as possible to science.

“After the last few years when we had pandemic and then the cyber attack, we were all hungry to show that ALMA is a very efficient observatory and that it achieves its commitment to the scientific community,” says astronomer Hugo Messias (AOPG). “The climate is always challenging, but with good coordination, we succeeded, congratulations to all of us”, concludes Hugo.
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2 Comments

  2. Martin Diaz
    Martin Diaz on October 2, 2024 at 5:39 pm

    Tremendo logros!!! Felicitaciones a todos!!! Vamos por más!!

    Reply

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