ALMA announces Joint Proposal agreements for JWST, VLA, and the VLT

20 December, 2022

The ALMA observatory is pleased to announce that it has entered into Joint Proposal agreements with the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the European Southern Observatory (ESO) for the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) for the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA).

Joint Proposals are dedicated to scientific projects that require observations with two or more observatories to achieve their scientific goals. A Joint Proposal is submitted to a single observatory for scientific peer review, which allows one observatory to award observing time on multiple telescopes. Therefore, Principal Investigators no longer need to submit separate proposals to each observatory, saving both time in preparing proposals and avoiding “double jeopardy” since the proposal is reviewed just once.

For each ALMA cycle, starting in Cycle 10, ALMA will be able to allocate up to 115 hours of JWST time, up to 50 hours on the VLT, and up to 5% of the available time on the VLA.

Similarly, JWST will be able to allocate up to 115 hours of ALMA time (on each of the 12-m, 7-m, and Total Power Arrays) per cycle starting with JWST Cycle 2 (with the call for proposals released in November 2022), and the VLA and VLT will each be able to allocate up to 50 h of ALMA time per year starting with Semester 2023B for the VLA (with the call for proposals released in January 2023) and Period 112 for the VLT (with the call for proposals released in February 2023).

More details on how to apply for Joint Proposals will be provided in announcements by each Observatory. Any questions on Joint Proposals can be directed to the ALMA Helpdesk.