ALMA

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submilliter Array (ALMA) is a revolutionary instrument currently under construction in the Atacama desert, Chile. When completed, it will consist of 66 antennas, operated as an interferometer array, and will be used 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). The core of the European Regional Centre is located in Garching, Germany with a number of ARC nodes (see the Links page) spread over the continent.

The Nordic ARC node

The main mission of the Nordic ARC node, based at Onsala Space Observatory, Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden), is to provide ALMA support services to astronomers in the Nordic (Denmark/Finland/Iceland/Norway/Sweden) and Baltic (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) countries, and in general to help and encourage the community to make the best use of ALMA. More specifically, ARC node services 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 of the European ARC nodes offers different specialist scientific and technical expertise to the whole European ALMA community. At the Nordic ARC, this expertise includes imaging techniques such as multi-frequency synthesis and polarimetric imaging, optimised self-calibration and astrometry.

The host university of the Nordic ARC node, Chalmers University of Technology has an active astronomy group with an interest in many areas of ALMA enabled science including interstellar medium studies, star-formation, evolved-stars, nearby galaxies, active galactic nuclei and high-redshift galaxies. Astronomers at Chalmers/Onsala are also involved in developing data analysis and modelling tools for astrochemistry and radiative transfer. Scientific collaborations between astronomy group/ARC node scientists and the wider community are welcome.