ALMA

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submilliter Array (ALMA) is a revolutionary instrument currently under construction in the Atacama desert, Chile. It will consist of 66 antennas, operated in interferometric mode, to explore the millimeter and submillimeter window with unprecedent sensitivity and angular resolution.

ALMA is an international collaboration between East Asia, Europe and North America. Astronomers of the different participating countries will interact with ALMA via ALMA Regional Centres (ARC). In Europe, a main Regional Centre is located in Garching, Germany, and several ARC nodes (see the Links page) are spread over the continent.

The Nordic ARC node

The Nordic ARC node, based at Onsala Space Observatory (Sweden), is dedicated to provide service to the Nordic astronomers (Denmark/Finland/Iceland/Norway/Sweden), and to help and encourage the community to make the best use of ALMA. More specifically, the missions of the ARC include e.g. face-to-face support for proposal preparation, observing setups, projects status follow-up, data reduction (CASA software), and access to archives.

In addition, each ARC node offers different scientific and technical expertise. At the Nordic ARC, local expertise includes more particularly multi-frequency synthesis, short spacings, astrometry, and self-calibration.

Connected to radio-mm astronomy, there are noticeably strong science interests in studying circumstellar envelopes of evolved stars, starbursts and active galactic nuclei, as well as nearby galaxies. Analysis methods and tools are being developed, e.g. radiative transfer, astrochemistry (non-exhaustive list).