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ALMA Winter School in Prague, 28 – 29 February 2012, Czech Republic

ALMA Opens Its Eyes

The most powerful millimeter/submillimeter-wavelength telescope in the world opens for business and reveals its first image.

Humanity’s most complex ground-based astronomy observatory, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), has officially opened for astronomers. The first released image, from a telescope still under construction, reveals a view of the Universe that cannot be seen at all by visible-light and infrared telescopes. Thousands of scientists from around the world competed to be the first few researchers to explore some of the darkest, coldest, farthest, and most hidden secrets of the Cosmos with this new astronomical tool.

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The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA)

ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array is a revolutionary instrument currently under construction located on the Chajnantor plain of the Chilean Andas, 5000 m above sea level. 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 are spread over the continent.

The Czech ARC node

The Czech ARC node should provide regional support to applicants from countries of the Central and Eastern European region, e.g. from Poland, Slovakia, Hungary etc., that are not ESO members yet, and to Czech ALMA users. It will provide especially the following services:

(1) scientific and technical support to ALMA users in the fields that are not yet covered, or are covered only partially, with other existing European ARC nodes, especially: (i) solar and (extra) galactic astrophysics, (ii) laboratory measurements of molecular spectral lines,
(2) observation planning, data quality check,
(3) data storage and processing, data reduction using CASA.

The Czech ARC node is to be formed as a consortium of the Astronomical Institute, ASCR and the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) in Prague, with further cooperation with the Charles University in Prague and the Masaryk University in Brno.


Link to working version of the Czech ARC node proposal (pdf).
Link to presentation of the Czech ARC node (ppt).

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