About UK ARC

The UK ARC node provides direct user support to the UK community for all aspects of using ALMA, from proposal planning to advanced data reduction and interpretation techniques. ALMA will be a new and complex instrument to use, even for those with sub-mm experience and the majority of users will benefit from face-to-face support provided by a dedicated team at a central support facility. In particular, the UK ARC brings together essential experience in high-resolution radio interferometry, developed over many years of experience with MERLIN, VLBI and VLA, to complement the existing UK expertise in single-dish sub-mm astronomy.

The UK ARC node is centrally located in the UK at the University of Manchester and conveniently placed for all national and international transport links. A dedicated suite of offices and workstations is provided in a new building which houses the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (combining the university's astronomy and astrophysics group, the e-MERLIN/VLBI national facility and part of the Jodrell Bank Observatory).

We provide a range of expert assistance, combining the expertise and experience in interferometry built up from e-MERLIN with specific expertise from the ALMA archive development group in Manchester, the ALMA Observing Tool team at the ATC in Edinburgh, the calibration team at the Cavendish in Cambridge, the simulation-tool team in Oxford and the engineering skills of the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory. The ARC node will tailor its support for the UK ALMA community requirements by providing additional specific expertise and assistance in the areas of high-sensitivity, wide bandwidth and high dynamic-range imaging, multi-frequency synthesis and astrometry.

We maintain a mailing list to keep the community informed.