Announcement for early proposal planning for Cycle 12

ALMA is making the following information available to assist with early proposal planning for Cycle 12.

• Key dates (anticipated) for Cycle 12
  • 20 March 2025: Release of the ALMA Cycle 12 Call for Proposals and Observing Tool, and opening of the archive for proposal submission
  • 24 April 2025: Proposal submission deadline
  • October 2025: Start of Cycle 12 observations, spanning 12 months

• New in Cycle 12
  • Full-polarization single-field interferometry in Band 1 on the 7-m Array with the same polarization capability and accuracy as in Bands 3 - 7
  • VLBI flux density thresholds for active phasing targets can be reduced by sqrt(8) across all bands compared with the limits imposed for Cycle 11.
  • In addition to the regular ALMA EHT campaign, EHT multi-epoch monitoring will allow proposals spanning March through May . Monitoring observations will be limited to ALMA night time LSTs. Proposals are still limited to less than 50 hours.
• Observing modes for Large Programs
  • Large Programs are proposals with an estimated execution time of greater than 50 hours on the 12-m Array (with or without accompanying ACA time) or 150 hours on the 7-m Array in stand-alone mode. Large Programs should not involve time-critical or ToO observations, and may not include observations in full polarization measurements, solar observations, VLBI, Phased Array mode, Astrometric observations or observations requiring bandwidth switching calibration.

• Cycle 12 Configuration schedule
  • The schedule is provided in this page. 

Full details will be published in the Cycle 12 Call for Proposals.