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.

European ALMA School 2026 pre-registration announcement

Published: 27 Jun 2025

The Allegro ARC node is delighted to host the next European ALMA school that will take place in Leiden (NL) between 26 - 30 January 2026. Aimed at PhD students and postdocs, the school will cover a broad range of aspects related to ALMA: interferometry, data calibration, synthesis imaging, exploiting the ALMA archive, analysis techniques, and future ALMA developments.

assess_ms 3.0: ALMA uv coverage assessment tool released

Published: 26 Jun 2025

On 12 June 2025, the ALMA uv coverage assessment tool assess_ms version 3.0 (public version) was released. The tool takes as input a set of calibrated MeasurementSets and produces as output various diagnostic plots and texts which enable the user to assess the quality of the uv coverage comparing it with a theoretical expectation. The tool can process 12M, 7M, and mixed array ALMA data. See the documentation for more details.

ALMA Band 2 receiver production reaches halfway mark

Published: 26 Jun 2025

On 18 June 2025, the 33rd Band 2 receiver left the premises of the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) and is now on its way to the ALMA Operations Support Facility in Chile. This marks an important milestone since half of the receivers needed to equip 66 ALMA antennas have now been provided. Representatives from the three European Band 2 consortium partners and ESO could witness this event.

Job opening for ALMA Project Scientist at ESO Garching

Published: 28 May 2025

ESO Garching is looking for a scientist with expertise in instrumentation for submillimetre astronomy or related fields. The ESO ALMA Project Scientist will support the development of the various upgrade development studies and projects of the ALMA Observatory which are an integral part of its long-term life. They will be primarily responsible for the definition of the scientific capabilities of several ALMA upgrade projects and follow-up of the development and construction phases of such projects. See the announcement on the ESO Recruitment Portal.

Call for Proposals for ALMA Development Studies

Published: 28 May 2025

ESO is pleased to announce the Call for Proposals (CfP) for development studies for ALMA upgrades, with a deadline for proposal submission on Wednesday 27 August 2025 at 11:00am CEST. Interested institutes should register on the In-Tend portal and express interest in the ALMA Development Studies 2025 with reference FCFP-129429-AMA. The specific focus of this call includes the relevance to the implementation of the ALMA Development Roadmap priorities, and particularly the development of new receiver components allowing an expansion to 4x the current IF bandwidth, as well as software initiatives that enable and maximize the science output of the Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade.

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