Welcome to the Science Portal at ESO

Overview

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is a major new facility for world astronomy. When completed in 2013, ALMA will consist of a giant array of 12-m antennas, with baselines up to 16 km, and an additional compact array of 7-m and 12-m antennas to greatly enhance ALMA's ability to image extended targets. ALMA in Cycle 0 is outfitted with state-of-the-art receivers that cover atmospheric windows from 84–720GHz (3mm – 420 micron). Construction of ALMA started in 2003 and will be completed in 2013. Science observations will start in 2011 with 16 antennas and four receiver bands. The ALMA project is an international collaboration between Europe, East Asia and North America in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. More details can be found via the About ALMA link in the left menu.

This is the website for The ALMA Science Portal, served from one of the ALMA Regional Centers (ARCs) of the ALMA partner organizations: ESO, NRAO or NAOJ. You may switch between the different instances of the portal through the links to the appropriate ALMA partner at the top banner. Through this portal you can find details about the technical capabilities of ALMA, how to propose for observing time, and how to access ALMA data. It includes links to all official ALMA documents and tools, including those for preparing and submitting proposals and processing ALMA data. In order to access some of the tools, users must register with the project and login to the portal via the links at the top banner.

Each of the three ARCs provides additional User Services, including a Helpdesk for all user queries. Each ARC maintains additional web pages with information on region-specific user services, such as visitor and student programs, schools, workshops, financial programs and public outreach activities. These are accessed via the links under the User Services at the ARCs area in the left menu.