What can the UK ARC provide?

The European ALMA Regional Centre (ARC) provides scientific user support to the ESO community. The European ARC is organized as a network of scientific support nodes coordinated from ESO Headquarters in Garching-bei-München. Face to face support is provided at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, Manchester, in the UK, and by nodes based in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the Czech Republic and The Netherlands. The UK ARC Node is a collaboration between the Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Manchester and Oxford plus the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and is supported by STFC. ESO will maintain a mirror of the ALMA Archive and (once operations are well established) astronomers will be able to retrieve pipeline-processed data cubes after their observations. The regional ARC nodes provide face-to-face support from initial proposal preparation through to ultimate data processing.

The UK ARC Node provides support for all standard modes of ALMA operation, but if necessary we can draw on regional specialities such as the Czech node for Solar observing.

Proposal and observation preparation

We provide information and advice on how best to observe your targets with ALMA, using the available tools:

• Sensitivity calculator
• Simulation software, including hosting the ALMA Observation Support Tool. 
• Proposal preparation & observing tool

All these and more are available via the ALMA Portal

 

The UK ARC staff

have experience in a wide range of astronomical research areas to assist in designing ALMA observations to meet the needs of your project (whether mosaicing is required, which spectral lines can be covered simultaneously, sensitivity to emission on different scales and so on).

ALMA data reduction

The usual ALMA science pipeline product will be a calibrated datacube of images. The CASA package is suitable for reducing ALMA and most other radio interferometry data; we provide support and run CASA training workshops. In the first couple of years, before the pipeline is complete, data reduction to a similar level will be provided by ALMA staff.  At any stage, we are available to help with all stages of ALMA data reduction.

The UK ARC node will run tutorials in the CASA data processing package and help visitors with installation and use of CASA.

Enhanced data processing

We provide assistance in interpretation and enhanced data processing, e.g. from datacube to intensity, spectra, velocity, velocity dispersion.... (ALMA Science Verification data for NGC 3256, CO J1-0)

 

Science goals

The UK ARC can provide speakers for seminars or workshops at your institute, complementing the ongoing series of International and UK meetings stimulating interaction in the many fields which will benefit from ALMA, from solar system science and star formation to investigating cosmological constants.

 

M31 looks like this (above) now at 70 micron wavlength, but what was its high redshift ancestor like? Such systems , barely detected by the HST (Science archive, right) will be resolved by ALMA at 400 micron.

Archive Data

The ALMA archive will supply public domain data, whether to find calibration sources or  for science.  ARC node staff will assist with data mining and  support observers who wish to contribute advanced data products.

To go with your ALMA data...

JBCA is home to significant expertise in radio interferometry and the use of other complementary astronomical observatories. It hosts the e-MERLIN/VLBI National Facility and the SKA development office and has local experts in  Herschel, JCMT, Spitzer, VLTI  and a wide range of other facilities.