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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.