Daniel Espada, Masao Saito, Lars-Åke Nyman, Juan Cortes, Andy Biggs, Felix Stoehr, Itziar de Gregorio, Stephane Leon, Ruediger Kneissl, Liz Humphreys, Emilio Barrios, Gautier Mathys, Thomas Wiklind, Crystal Brogan, Carol Lonsdale, Anthony Remijan, Baltasar Vila-Vilaro, Eric Villard, Andreas Lundgren, Paola Andreani, Ken'ichi Tatematsu, John Hibbard
The transition from construction to full operations of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) brings the challenge to have not only software subsystems that are functional and stable but also to develop a system that works flawlessly as a single entity from proposal preparation to the delivery of the final data products to ALMA users. This is especially challenging as the different subsystems have to be constantly updated and improved to accommodate new observing modes and increasing capabilities. We present recent progress and future initiatives in the different offline subsystems that are currently being developed and used in ALMA operations: proposal preparation, submission and observation preparation (Observing Tool and submission server), proposal review process (Ph1M), project tracking (Project Tracker, Life Cycle), observation bookkeeping (Shift Log Tool), calibrator database (Source Catalogue), monitor and control of observations (Operations Monitoring and Control tool), dynamic scheduler, data reduction pipeline, quality assurance and trend analysis (AQUA), archive, as well as additional user support systems such as the Science Portal.
Lars-Åke Nyman, Pierre Cox, Stuartt Corder, Masao Saito, Andreas Lundgren, Baltasar Vila-Vilaro, Daniel Espada, Eric Villard, Emilio Barrios, Paola Andreani, John Hibbard, Ken'ichi Tatematsu
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is a new interferometer operated on Llano de Chajnantor at 5050 m altitude in the Chilean Andes. It consists of 66 antennas operating in the mm/submm windows between 3 and 0.3 mm wavelength. Early science observations using 16 antennas (known as Cycle 0) started in parallel with construction in September 2011, in order to provide useful results to the astronomy community and to facilitate the ongoing characterization of its system. ALMA is currently in Cycle 2 of early science observations. This presentation describes the development and progress of ALMA observations and data processing from Cycle 0 towards full operations.
P. Andreani, F. Stoehr, M. Zwaan, E. Hatziminaoglou, A. Biggs, M. Diaz-Trigo, E. Humphreys, D. Petry, S. Randall, T. Stanke, E. van Kampen, M. Bárta, J. Brand, F. Gueth, M. Hogerheijde, F. Bertoldi, T. Muxlow, A. Richards, W. Vlemmings
KEYWORDS: Observatories, Data archive systems, Astronomy, Calibration, Process modeling, Algorithm development, Data modeling, Interferometry, Data processing, Astrophysics
The ALMA Regional Centres (ARCs) form the interface between the ALMA observatory and the user community from
the proposal preparation stage to the delivery of data and their subsequent analysis. The ARCs provide critical services to
both the ALMA operations in Chile and to the user community. These services were split by the ALMA project into core
and additional services. The core services are financed by the ALMA operations budget and are critical to the successful
operation of ALMA. They are contractual obligations and must be delivered to the ALMA project. The additional
services are not funded by the ALMA project and are not contractual obligations, but are critical to achieve ALMA full
scientific potential.
A distributed network of ARC nodes (with ESO being the central ARC) has been set up throughout Europe at the
following seven locations: Bologna, Bonn-Cologne, Grenoble, Leiden, Manchester, Ondrejov, Onsala. These ARC nodes
are working together with the central node at ESO and provide both core and additional services to the ALMA user
community.
This paper presents the European ARC, and how it operates in Europe to support the ALMA community. This model,
although complex in nature, is turning into a very successful one, providing a service to the scientific community that has
been so far highly appreciated. The ARC could become a reference support model in an age where very large
collaborations are required to build large facilities, and support is needed for geographically and culturally diverse
communities.
Andreas Lundgren, Lars-Ake Nyman, Masao Saito, Baltasar Vila Vilaro, Gautier Mathys, Paola Andreani, John Hibbard, Sachiko Okumura, Ken'ichi Tatematsu, Bill Dent, Mark Rawlings, Eric Villard, Lewis Ball
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is a major new interferometer operated on Llano
de Chajnantor at 5050 m altitude in the Chilean high Andes. This location is considered one of the world's
outstanding sites for submillimeter astronomy.
ALMA is still under construction, but science observations has started already in what is commonly known
as ALMA Early Science Cycle 0. The purpose of ALMA Early Science Cycle 0 is to deliver scientically
useful results to the astronomy community and to facilitate the ongoing characterization of ALMA systems and
instrumentation as the capability of the array continues to grow. Early Science will continue through Cycle 1
and until construction and commissioning of ALMA is complete.
This publication aims to give an insight into the challenges we face operating telescope of this scale at
Chajnantor, a plateau 4800{5100 meter above sea level in one of the driest places of earth. It also will also
present statistics from the proposal submission, describe the path from an accepted proposal to a calibrated data
product, and nally an outlook for the future.
The ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) project is an international collaboration between Europe,
East Asia and North America in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The ALMA Array Operations Site (AOS) is
located at Chajnantor, a plateau at an altitude of 5000 m in the Atacama desert in Chile, and the ALMA Operations
Support Facility (OSF) is located near the AOS at an altitude of 2900 m. ALMA will consist of an array of 66 antennas,
with baselines up to 16 km and state-of-the-art receivers that cover all the atmospheric windows up to 1 THz. An
important component of ALMA is the compact array of twelwe 7-m and four 12-m antennas (the Atacama Compact
Array, ACA), which will greatly enhance ALMA's ability to image extended sources. Construction of ALMA started in
2003 and will be completed in 2013. Commissioning started in January 2010 and Early Science Operations is expected
to start during the second half of 2011.
ALMA science operations is provided by the Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) in Chile, and the three ALMA Regional
Centers (ARCs) located in each ALMA region - Europe, North America and East Asia.
ALMA observations will take place 24h per day, interrupted by maintenance periods, and will be done in service
observing mode with flexible (dynamic) scheduling. The observations are executed in the form of scheduling blocks
(SBs), each of which contains all information necessary to schedule and execute the observations. The default output to
the astronomer will be pipeline-reduced images calibrated according to the calibration plan. The JAO is responsible for
the data product quality. All science and calibration raw data are captured and archived in the ALMA archive, a
distributed system with nodes at the OSF, the Santiago central office and the ARCs.
Observation preparation will follow a Phase 1/Phase 2 process. During Phase 1, observation proposals will be created
using software tools provided by the JAO and submitted for scientific and technical review. Approved Phase 1 proposals
will be admitted to Phase 2 where all observations will be specified as SBs using software tools provided by the JAO.
User support will be done at the ARCs through a helpdesk system as well as face-to-face support.
The Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) is one of the largest and most complicated observatories
ever built. Constructing and operating an observatory at high altitude (5000m) in a cost effective and safe manner, with
minimal effect on the environment creates interesting challenges. Since the array will have to adapt quickly to prevailing
weather conditions, ALMA will be operated exclusively in service mode.
By the time of full science operations, the fundamental ALMA data product shall be calibrated, deconvolved data cubes
and images, but raw data and data reduction software will be made available to users as well. User support is provided by
the ALMA Regional Centres (ARCs) located in Europe, North America and Japan. These ARCs constitute the interface
between the user community and the ALMA observatory in Chile.
For European users the European ARC is being set up as a cluster of nodes located throughout Europe, with the main
centre at the ESO Headquarters in Garching. The main centre serves as the access portal and in synergy with the
distributed network of ARC nodes, the main aim of the ARC is to optimize the ALMA science output and to fully exploit
this unique and powerful facility.
The aim of this article is to introduce the process of proposing for observing time, subsequent execution of the
observations, obtaining and processing of the data in the ALMA epoch. The complete end-to-end process of the ALMA
data flow from the proposal submission to the data delivery is described.
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