Certain types of observing program require special attention by an ALMA Staff Phase-2 Group (P2G) member after the Scheduling Blocks (SBs) have been generated, in order to ensure successful execution at the telescope and the highest possible quality data. This can be, for example, adding suitable calibrators for high frequency and long baseline projects, adding extra bandwidth for projects with narrow aggregate bandwidth, adding “OFF” reference positions for Total Power or slightly optimizing frequency tunings. Some of these are described in the “Phase 2 Quickstart Guide” document, available from the Documentation page in the ALMA Science Portal.
Many of these types of observing program result in warnings in the ALMA-OT that are intended only to inform the ALMA P2G staff member and do not affect the submission of the SBs by the PI.
All non-standard observing modes will produce such a warning. As described in the Science Portal under 'Documents & Tools'
- Band 9 & 10 observations
- Long-baseline Band 7 observations where a suitable phase calibrator cannot be found
- All polarisation observations
- Spectral Scans
- Bandwidth switching projects (less than 1GHz aggregate bandwidths over all spectral windows)
- Solar observations
- VLBI observations
- Non-standard calibrations (user-defined calibrations selected in the OT)
ALMA staff will review (and, if necessary, modify) these SBs prior to their execution at the telescope.