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.

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.

I-TRAIN #25: The ALMA UV coverage assessment tool (assess_ms 3.0)

Published: 25 May 2025

The European ARC Network invites users to a presentation on the first public release of the ALMA uv coverage assessment tool "assess_ms" on 13 June, 11:00 CEST (Zoom link).

Announcing the Second European ALMA School, January 2026

Published: 25 Apr 2025

Allegro, the ALMA Regional Center node in the Netherlands, is pleased to announce that it will be hosting the second European ALMA School on 26 - 30 January 2026. The School will be held at Leiden University in the Netherlands and will feature a week of hands-on training in ALMA data processing and analysis, guided by world experts from the European ARC network. A website with more information about the location, school program, and how to register will open in June.

I-TRAIN #24: VLBI Part II: obtaining and calibrating VLBI data with phased ALMA

Published: 25 Apr 2025

The European ARC Network invites users to a second I-TRAIN on VLBI data using ALMA as a phased array on 16 May at 10:00 CET (link to Zoom).

This tutorial will provide an introduction to accessing and dealing with VLBI data from networks which include ALMA as a phased array. We will first cover accessing phased data and what is on the ALMA archive.  Then ALMA's role in the Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA), how to obtain PI and/or archival GMVA data, and how to calibrate them will be discussed. Finally, we'll look at EHT data, how to obtain those publicly available datasets, and how to calibrate them.

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