The European ARC Network is offering an online training on the ALMA Science Pipeline on December 4, 2020, 11:00 CET [Zoom link]. In this training session participants will learn how to run the ALMA Science Pipeline for their own scientific purposes. They will be guided on how to tweak different parameters of the pipeline tasks to produce cleaned data cubes from publicly available ALMA data. This will allow users to obtain products that are tailored to the specific requirements of their science projects.

The European ARC Network is offering a topical training on some recently added functionality of the ALMA Science Archive like access to individual files, the CARTA remote visualization and the new ALMA VO services. The training session will be on December 15, 2020, 11:00 CET [Google link]. An overview over the European ALMA development project ARI-L will follow. ARI-L has already delivered over 74000 science FITS files to the ALMA Science Archive completing the existing ALMA products for Cycles 2-4.

The European ARC Network is offering an online training on UVMultiFit on January 15, 2021, 11:00 CET [Zoom link]. The tool UVMultiFit is a versatile library for fitting models directly to visibility data. Visibility fitting can be a powerful method to analyze interferometric data and extract source information without the need to process image deconvolution. During this training session users will learn how to use this tool on real, publicly available ALMA data.

Dear colleagues,

With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to impact our lives around the world, everyone at ALMA hopes that you and your families are staying safe and healthy. The pandemic situation in Chile is remaining stable and over the past few weeks ALMA staff have been moving forward with ALMA’s plan to recover the telescope array in the Atacama, as announced on October 1st, 2020.

The first 60000 data cubes and continuum images generated by the Additional Representative Images for Legacy (ARI-L) ALMA development project are now available to download from the ALMA Science Archive (ASA). In addition to the primary-beam-corrected images, the released products also include the primary beams, and mask for all targets and calibrators of more than 1200 Cycle 3 and 4 datasets.

ALMA started the ‘Operation Support Facility (OSF) Ramp-up phase’ on 21 October. During this phase, the focus of the recovery is on returning to normal services at the Operations Support Facility, including food service, opening of labs and offices, and the confirmation of the stability of critical services.

On December 3 and 4 the ALMA Helpdesk will migrate to a new service provider, Deskpro. The new Helpdesk system will have the same functionality as the current system, but with a refreshed user experience for the ALMA user when creating tickets and interacting with the knowledgebase. We are confident that the new system will further improve the value of the Helpdesk in supporting exciting ALMA science!

Because of the migration to the new service provider the ALMA Helpdesk may be down during parts of December 3 and 4.

The UK ARC Node hosted its first virtual ALMA workshop for new postgraduate students during a series of half-days from the 9th to the 13th of November 2020.  This workshop covered the same topics that are featured in typical introductory ALMA workshops, including introductions to ALMA and interferometry, hands-on work with the Observing Tool and the ALMA Science Archive, and calibration and imaging in CASA. The difference was that this workshop was conducted entirely virtually, which presented some new challenges in terms of interactions with the participants, particularly in terms of troubleshooting problems. However, by the end, the participants succeeded in making their own ALMA images.