Seminar
ALMA user support in Europe

Abstract

ALMA is a submillimetre/millimetre telescope located at 5000m in the Atacama desert in Chile designed to observe at 0.32–9.5 mm (31–950 GHz), and it is expected to be the leading observatory in these wavelengths for many decades to come. ALMA has performed scientific observations since September 2011, with new capabilities being offered for each new observing cycle. The interface between ALMA and the astronomical community is provided by the ALMA Regional Centres (ARCs). The European ARC is located at ESO, Garching. In Europe, the services to the community are provided by a distributed network of ARC nodes. The European ARC network is an international, geographically dispersed structure, and consists of the central ARC at ESO, seven ARC nodes and one Centre of Expertise, distributed across Europe. It is an organised effort to provide the European ALMA user community with uniform expert support from the stage of proposal preparation through to data reduction, in order to enable the optimal usage and increase the scientific output of ALMA. The model for the European ARC nodes network will be described in terms of its organisation, communication strategies and user support. ALMA capabilities and recent ALMA results will also be summarised.
Depending on the interest of the participants, the talk can be followed by a small demo of the ALMA Observing Tool (OT) for the creation and submission of ALMA proposals, as well as the ALMA Snooping Project Interface (SnooPI), that allows PIs and Co-Is to follow their projects throughout their life-cycle.