The Italian node of the European ARC network will support the ALMA users in all the steps of their projects, by helping with
- ALMA proposal preparation and submission
- Optimising the observing strategy
- Tracking the project status
- Data processing and imaging
- Archive mining
- Handling large data sets
Users can request face-to-face support by sending a request to the ALMA help-desk help.almascience.org.
Other inquiries can be made via e-mail to the node’s address help-desk@alma.inaf.it.
Details to visit our headquarters are here.
More details about the Italian ARC node staff and activities can be found in the ItARC Staff page.
According to the MoU that defines the ARC network mission, for each ALMA approved project with Italian Principal Investigators (PI) we act as Contact Scientist, i.e. the point of contact between PI and the ESO-ARC for the entire lifetime of a project.
We also see it as our duty to bring together the existing community of astronomers
working in (or making use of observations in) the (sub)mm-field, to facilitate collaborations and to make this community grow.
We contribute to the functioning and development of ALMA user tools and facilities. Our activities towards the ALMA project itself are variegated, but always aimed towards an improved operability of the array, assurance of fast delivery of reliable data to the PIs, and improving the ALMA User experience.
Therefore, our areas of expertise are a balance between technical and scientific skills. Details can be found in our dedicated pages:
Updates of our activities and community are collected in the following official documents:
Oct 2024 – The Italian ARC: status and perspectives in the ALMA WSU framework.
May 2023 – Ten years of ALMA. The Italian ALMA Regional Centre
Oct 2015 – Five Years of Early Science with ALMA and the Activities of the Italian ARC