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.

Registration is now open for European ALMA School 2026

Published: 01 Aug 2025

We are delighted to announce that the 2026 European ALMA school will be hosted by the Allegro ARC node in Leiden, the Netherlands, from 26 to 30 January 2026. Whether you are an intermediate user or have never seen ALMA data before, this is the event for you - and a great opportunity to meet fellow ALMA users from Europe and beyond. The school will cover a broad range of topics related to ALMA: basics of interferometry, data calibration, synthesis imaging, working with the ALMA archive, advance data analysis techniques, and future ALMA developments.

Cycle 12 proposal statistics

Published: 01 Jul 2025

Statistics of proposal submission for Cycle 12 have been released. Europe continues to be the region with the highest oversubscription rate (7.8 for time on the 12m array). The median time requested on the 12m array per proposal increased to it's highest ever: 15.1 hrs. The report can be accessed here.

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.

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Quick Links

ALMA Web site: The main ALMA Web site maintained by the Joint ALMA Observatory.
ALMA Science Portal: The primary web interface between ALMA and the science community.
ALMA Helpdesk: Please use the Helpdesk to contact us for questions of any kind.

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