Welcome to ALMA and the European ALMA Regional Centre!

ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is the world's largest ground-based facility for observations in the millimeter/submillimeter regime located on the Chajnantor plateau, 5000 meters altitude in northern Chile. It enables transformational research into the physics of the cold Universe, probes the first stars and galaxies, and directly images the formation of planets. ALMA comprises a giant array of fifty 12-m antennas, which can be configured to achieve baselines up to 16 km. It is equipped with state-of-the-art receivers that cover all the atmospheric windows up to 1 THz. In addition, a compact array of 7-m and 12-m antennas greatly enhance ALMA's ability to image extended sources.

The European ALMA Regional Centre (ARC) provides the interface between the ALMA project and the European science community. It supports its users mainly in the areas of proposal preparation, observation preparation, data reduction, and data analysis.

Below you can read the latest Announcements from the European ARC Network.. More details and up-to-date information can be found in the News section and the ALMA Science Portal.

Completion of the study on AlN SIS junctions technology development

Published: 26 Jul 2024

A study by the Group for Advanced Receiver Development (GARD, Sweden) to develop new fabrication technology for sub-micron size Aluminium Nitride (AlN) barrier Superconductor Insulator Superconductor (SIS) junctions has been successfully completed. These SIS junctions are at the core of most ALMA receivers where the sky signal is mixed with the Local Oscillator to tune the receivers to the desired frequency. 

Completion of the ALMA development study on the Atmospheric Model

Published: 26 Jul 2024

A development study aimed to validate and improve the current atmospheric radiative transfer model implemented for ALMA (atmospheric transmission model, ATM) has been successfully completed. The model is important for both planning and helping in the calibration of ground-based observations at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths.

Upcoming Release of Observatory Project Data for "B3 observation of a super-deep field in HDF-S"

Published: 04 Jul 2024

The ALMA Observatory is starting the release process of the data acquired in one of the Observatory Projects, 2022.A.00034.S. 

Upcoming Release of Observatory Project Data for "A 5-pc-scale study of molecular clouds in the Antennae"

Published: 04 Jul 2024

The ALMA Observatory is starting the release process of the data acquired in one of the Observatory Projects, 2022.A.00032.S. 

ORP funding available for face-to-face visits till the end of 2024

Published: 16 Jun 2024

ORP (Opticon Radionet Pilot) funding remains available till the end of 2024 for travel to one of the European ALMA Regional Centre nodes in Europe, for ALMA users who need face-to-face support for their ALMA projects. Users wishing to apply for ORP funding should fill out the form in addition to submitting a Helpdesk ticket that is required to arrange the ARC node visit. Face-to-face visits to ARC nodes can be arranged for assistance with data calibration and analysis, proposal preparation, and archive research projects.

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