Opening of the ALMA archive for the submission of proposals for Early Science Cycle 0
2 June, 2011 / Read time: 2 minutes
On June 1 at 15:00 UT, as announced earlier this year in the plan towards the beginning of science operations, the ALMA archive opened for the submission of proposals for Early Science Cycle 0. The first ALMA Science Verification data are now available to the community, providing high spectral resolution band 7 data from observations of TW Hydra and low spectral resolution band 3 data from NGC 3256. These datasets demonstrate the very early capabilities of ALMA. They were observed before 10 ALMA antennas were available and while many of the subsystems were still being tested, so they should not be construed to represent the data quality for Early Science. These datasets are provided now to enable the user community to become acquainted with the ALMA data structure, observing strategies, and data reduction techniques.
Information about submitting proposals and about the Science Verification data, including links to download the actual data files, are available from the ALMA Science Portal at www.almascience.org
This latest step towards the start of ALMA operations is the result of a great deal of work by many people from all over the world, particularly in this case those responsible for the delivery of the ALMA archive, the Science Team responsible for Commissioning and Science Verification, and the teams responsible for Science Operations at the ARCs and at the JAO.