Doc 6.0, ver. 0.2| December 2017

User’s Guide to the East Asian ALMA
Regional Center (EA-ARC)
Japan (EA-ARC), Taiwan (EA-ARC node),
and Korea (EA-ARC node).

ALMA, an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia
in cooperation with the Republic of Chile.

For further information or to comment on this document, please contact your regional Helpdesk through the ALMA User
Portal at www.almascience.org. Helpdesk tickets will be directed to the appropriate ALMA Regional Center at
ESO, NAOJ or NRAO.

Version

Date

Editors

1.1-Cycle0

04/22/2011

Daniel Espada, Sachiko Okumura, Kazuya Saigo, Erik Muller

1.2

12/16/2011

Daniel Espada

1.7.1.004/05/2012

Erik Muller

1.7.1.1

06/28/2012

Erik Muller

1.7.1.2

10/22/2012

Erik Muller

1.8

08/29/2014

Erik Muller

1.9

02/08/2015

Erik Muller

4.0

03/02/2016

Erik Muller

5.0

03/03/2016

Erik Muller

6.0

12/12/2017

Hiroshi Nagai, Yu-Nung Su, A-ran Lyo, Fumi Egusa,
Kouichiro Nakanishi, Daniel Espada, Eiji Akiyama

East Asian ALMA Regional CenterIn publications, please refer to this document as:
User’s Guide to the East Asian ALMA Regional Center (EA-ARC)

Contents

Scope .........................................................................................................................................................4
Web Resources ..........................................................................................................................................4
1. ALMA and EA-ARC mission goals .......................................................................................................5
2. The East Asian ALMA Regional Center (EA-ARC) ...............................................................................5
2.1. The EA-ARC services. ..................................................................................................................5
2.2. EA-ARC user support roles ...........................................................................................................6
2.3. EA-ARC Observatory support roles ...............................................................................................7
2.4. EA Users: Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean regions. .................................................................7
3. User Communication, Information, news and help ...............................................................................8
3.1. The ALMA Science Portal. ............................................................................................................8
3.2. East Asia ARC and Node information ............................................................................................83.3. The ALMA Helpdesk .....................................................................................................................8
3.4. Support for travel to Mitaka and the nodes. ...................................................................................94. EA-ARC roles in proposal preparation, observations & data processing ..............................................94.1. Call for Proposal............................................................................................................................94.2. “Phase 1”: Proposal preparation. ...................................................................................................94.3. Proposal assessment ....................................................................................................................94.4. “Phase 2”: Preparation for observations ......................................................................................10
4.5. Data reduction & data software and archive support. ..................................................................10
5. ARC nodes ........................................................................................................................................10

ScopeThis document explains the role, structure, duties and function of the East Asian ALMA Regional
Center based at NAOJ (National Astronomy Observatory of Japan) Chile Observatory, at the
Mitaka Campus in Tokyo, Japan; the Taiwan node at the ASIAA, in Taipei; and the Korean node
at KASI, in Daejeon.

Web Resources
ALMA Science portal;
http://almascience.nao.ac.jp
ALMA Helpdesk:
https://help.almascience.org
EA-ARC Webpage:https://researchers.alma-telescope.jp/j/ea-arc/ (NAOJ, Japanese)
https://researchers.alma-telescope.jp/e/ea-arc/ (NAOJ, English)

http://alma.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw (Taiwan Node, English)
http://alma.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw/index_c.php (Taiwan Node, Chinese)
http://alma.kasi.re.kr (Korean Node)
EA-ARC workshops & events information
https://researchers.alma-telescope.jp/e/event/Observing Tool (proposal preparation tool)https://almascience.nao.ac.jp/proposing/observing-tool
CASA (Data reduction)
http://casa.nrao.edu/

1. ALMA and EA-ARC mission goals
The ALMA telescope is a global collaboration involving East Asia, Europe, North America and thehost country, Chile. ALMA comprises 66 high-precision antennas equipped with receiver anddigital electronics system with a future capability to observe the 30 GHz to 1 THz frequency range,
with angular resolutions as high as 5 milli-arcseconds. Using a fully dynamic scheduling system
and innovative calibration strategies, the ALMA system will allow us to make the best use of theatmospheric conditions on the Chajnantor plateau, at 5000 m altitude in the Atacama desert.
The highest quality science produced with ALMA in the mm/submm bands is enabled throughcompetitive proposal application, incorporating the widest possible user community,
comprehensively supported by the regional ALMA centres (ARCs) at each stage from proposal
submission to data-delivery and data analysis. The ARCs also manage local data distribution anddata archiving.
The East Asian ARC (EA-ARC) is based at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(NAOJ) with Taiwan and Korean nodes in Taipei and Deajeon, to help users fully exploit thecapabilities of ALMA and maximize ALMA's scientific return. ALMA will appeal to a much broader
range of astronomers than the conventional mm/submm community, and ALMA users of all levels
and backgrounds are invited to take advantage of the assistance and expertise available at the
EA-ARC.

2. The East Asian ALMA Regional Center (EA-ARC)
The EA-ARC comprises a core oﬃce located at the NAOJ Mitaka campus in Japan, the Taiwan
Node at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) and the Koreannode at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). The Japan, Taiwan and Koreanoﬃces are coordinated by close collaboration of their respective managers and local staﬀ. While
the three sites have strong focus towards their respective local user-base, the services andfacilities are largely consistent throughout.

2.1.

The EA-ARC services.

1. EA-ARC user and observatory support;
EA-ARC is composed of people engaged in scientific support, computer hardware and software
support, archive maintenance, education, and public outreach. The roles of user support andobservatory support are detailed in section 2.2 and 2.3. Information of the EA-ARC staﬀ ismaintained at:https://researchers.alma-telescope.jp/e/ea-arc/ (NAOJ)

http://alma.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw (Taiwan Node)
http://alma.kasi.re.kr (Korean Node)
2. Tutorials, Workshops and training;
The EA-ARC holds ALMA user’s meetings, regional ‘Town meetings’, and provides up to date
information in conferences, workshops and astronomical society meetings. At these workshops,
information on current and proposed capabilities is shared. Tutorials and hands-on sessions
using the Observing Tool and CASA for proposal preparation and data reduction are also
provided for the community. Feedback is specifically solicited from the user-community to
improve ALMA operations during these meetings, although feedback is welcome at any time.
A list of tutorial and workshop events is maintained at:https://researchers.alma-telescope.jp/e/event/ (NAOJ)
http://alma.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw/twarc_tutorials.php (ASIAA)
http://alma.kasi.re.kr/Korea_ARC_Node_Events.php (KASI)

3. Face-to-face meeting;A small number of visitors can be accommodated at NAOJ, ASIAA or KASI, for “Face to face”
support, typically this is data processing assistance provided by EA-ARC support staﬀ. Somefunding is available for travel and accommodation (See also section 3.4). Requests for Face toface support should be submitted via the helpdesk system described in section 3.3.

2.2.

EA-ARC user support roles

The EA-ARC oﬃces in Japan, Taiwan and Korea are staﬀed by a number of active scientists andpostdoctorate personnel, who together provide support for research scientists, at all stages of
proposal preparation, as well as data processing. The EA-ARC staﬀ have wide experience in
mm/submm astronomy with particular expertise in interferometer mosaicking, single-dish dataprocessing, combination of interferometric data and single dish data, polarimetry, solar
observations and data processing, and advanced data analysis. The EA-ARC scientific staﬀ, theirresearch interests and support roles are introduced at:https://researchers.alma-telescope.jp/e/ea-arc/staff.html. (NAOJ)
http://alma.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw/people_arc.php (ASIAA)
http://alma.kasi.re.kr/people_staﬀ.php (KASI)
Each ARC staﬀ member has a unique set of task allocations, as primary leads in various ALMA
subsystems, and cognizant roles (i.e. a regional expert and contact person) in some systems e.g. the ‘Archive Cognizant lead’ will represent the EA-ARC within the ALMA-wide Archive
working group, and contribute when cross-ALMA discussions and decisions are taking place.
The core tasks of the EA-ARC scientific staﬀ include;
Contribute to the preparation and distribution of user documentation.
As the ARC staﬀ have a diverse expertise, it’s beneficial for all staﬀ to contribute their
specialisations and expertise to the development of user-documentation and usersupport.
Organize training material, tutorials, workshops, user’s meetings, and visitor support.
As the ARCs have wide representation in many ALMA subsystems, the expertise isdiverse and knowledge transfer from the cognizant leads to the user community, andwithin the ARC nodes themselves is an important function (please see sections 3.4 and
3.5 for more details).
Respond to ALMA Helpdesk queries.
EA-ARC Helpdesk Cognizant leads will determine the first-response to incoming
Helpdesk tickets. Helpdesk lead may choose to defer the response to a diﬀerent ARC
staﬀ member, or even to a diﬀerent ARC that might be in a better position to respondquickly, and usefully. A meaningful response to any Helpdesk submission is guaranteed
within 48 working hours, and for this reason, users should ensure they use the Helpdesk
for queries to the ARCs, and not private email to the staﬀ, which cannot be managed
by the Helpdesk team.

Perform support duties to PIs on a personal level, as their ‘contact scientist’.
Each successful ALMA observing project will be assigned to an ARC Contact Scientist
from amongst the EA-ARC staﬀ, relevant to their node. Communication between theContact Scientist and the PI should be made via the Helpdesk. Contact Scientists willcontact users after notification of the proposal submission outcome, primarily to discussand finalize the observing process (called “phase 2”, see section 4.4 for more details),
and will remain through the observations until the end of the quality assurance process
and final delivery of the data products to the user.
Generate, verify, correct and describe to PIs, observing scheduling blocks (‘Phase 2’).
Phase 2 refers to the process where the project proposal is converted into observing
instructions. The PIs will not be exposed to the Phase II aspect. What was previously
the “phase II checking” stage will involve only the confirmation of the Phase I content,
and adjustment where necessary, prior to committing the project to the observations
queue (see section 4.4 for more detail).
Archive Research Support.
A mirror site of ALMA science data archive is kept at NAOJ. Raw data, calibrated
synthesized images, calibration and imaging scripts, and some additional files will beavailable through this archive mirror after the quality assurance. After the specificproprietary period (12 months for regular projects and 6 months for DDT projects), all
the data will be public for users. Any users are welcome to exploit the public data for
their science. EA-ARC can assist users in using the archive, including face-to-faceconsultation.

2.3.

EA-ARC Observatory support roles

Assist Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) in the Proposal Review Process.
ARC staﬀ can serve as Technical secretaries. In this capacity, the Technical secretaryprovides support to the proposal reviewers.
Serve as Astronomers-on-Duty (AoD) for on-site observations monitoring.
ARC staﬀ serve as astronomers-on-duty at the Operations Support Facility in Chile, fora total of 8 weeks, shared within the ARC. This is a core responsibility for all Executives.
The ARC staﬀ are therefore up to date in the operations of ALMA, develop and maintaina continuing face-to-face communication between the ARCs, and JAO.
Undertake data reduction, data quality assurance (QA) and enable distribution of data to PIs.
ALMA is responsible for reducing the PIs’ data to assure the data quality. Pipeline
calibration and imaging have been fully commissioned for most observing modes
employed in previous cycles but about 25% of observing projects will still becalibrated and imaged manually using standard scripts (e.g., high frequency bands,
full polarization, solar data). The data processing will be done using a combinationof the pipeline and manual analysis using CASA. The pipeline calibration andimaging can be run both at ARC and JAO. Almost all manual data processing will
be done at ARC.

2.4.

EA Users: Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean regions.

EA users supported principally by EA-ARC staﬀ are all those carrying out research based in any
Japanese, Taiwanese or Korean Research Institutions or Universities. However, Taiwan-based
researchers can select, via the ALMA science portal that their principal support be based in either
the East-Asian, or North-American ARCs, to which their observing time will be allocated. Further
information about the Taiwan oﬃce can be found at: http://alma.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw3. User Communication, Information, news and help
3.1.

The ALMA Science Portal.

The science portal serves as a nexus for all ALMA-related matters;- Proposal information - building and submitting your proposals.
- Archive access - a data repository and portal for delivered and archived data.
- ALMA proposal-development and data-reduction tools.
- Documentation on policy and operation, as well as operation of ALMA software and tools.
- Access to SnooPI, to monitor the progress of observations.
- Helpdesk; for users’ FAQs and questions/help requests.
The East Asia ALMA science portal website can be found at: http://almascience.nao.ac.jp/

3.2.

East Asia ARC and Node information

Regional East Asia ARC information page contains similar information to the science portal site,
but has a strong emphasis towards regional information: tutorials, meetings, local staﬀ, etc.
https://researchers.alma-telescope.jp/j/ea-arc/ (Japanese）
https://researchers.alma-telescope.jp/e/ea-arc/(English)http://alma.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw hosts information for the Taiwan node.
http://alma.kasi.re.kr hosts information for the Korean node.

3.3.

The ALMA Helpdesk

The ALMA Helpdesk is the primary means for communication between users and ALMA.
Interaction is via a “ticketing system”, which automatically tracks user-submissions (called“tickets”) and related communications across the entire global community. Access to the Helpdesk
is via the science portal, thus users are required to first register with ALMA before access to theHelpdesk system: https://help.almascience.org.
Users should first consult the Knowledgebase information repository - if the information therein is
not suitable, then the users should feel free to detail the specifics of their query in a dedicatedHelpdesk ticket.
Helpdesk tickets will be automatically redirected to the user’s respective ARC in the first instance,
i.e. queries from East Asian users will be addressed by the East Asian ARC staﬀ. Such tickets are“triaged”; assessed for the most rapid and timely response path; either by local ARC staﬀ (“usersupport specialists” - USS), or redistributed back to the global helpdesk for the attention of otherinternational experts.
In general, users should not contact the Operations staﬀ directly (i.e. by private email); Helpdesksubmitted tickets are triaged to on-hand staﬀ (ensuring rapid response); staﬀ are not able topersonally allocate time resources to communicate with the users directly and using the Helpdesk
system enables ALMA to build its information store and share Helpdesk information, ultimately
helping ALMA staﬀ provide a more eﬃcient service for the user.

Users can generally expect a response within 2 business days. Tickets submitted within a few
days prior to the proposal deadline (‘Proposal Deadline Rapid Response’ period) will be accessedby the international Helpdesk pool to facilitate the most rapid response. The EA-ARC will support
EA users in both English and Japanese, however to receive a prompt response within a few daysof the deadline, we encourage users to use English, as doing so will enable any available ARC
staﬀ from anywhere in the world contribute a rapid reply.
Once the ticket has been satisfactorily answered, EA-ARC staﬀ will mark the ticket as ‘Resolved’,
and if the user is satisfied with the response they should mark the ticket as ‘Closed’.

3.4.

Support for travel to Mitaka and the nodes.

For users needing or wishing to attend the ARC or nodes to discuss or re-attempt the processingof their observations, with nearby ARC/node staﬀ support can make use of travel andaccommodation provided by the ARC and Nodes. In general, support to the ARC and nodes is
supported at a domestic level only.
The NAOJ campus hosts a dedicated networked visitor’s work room with rapid access to ALMA
archives and to ALMA data reduction software support (Astronomy Data Center at NAOJ, see
https://www.adc.nao.ac.jp/E/index-e.htm). Working disk space is also provided for raw andprocessed data, as laptop use may be impractical, considering the ~1 TB sizes of ALMA data files.
Users are able to request face-to-face support via a Helpdesk inquiry (see section 3.3).

4. EA-ARC roles in proposal preparation, observations & data processing
4.1.

Call for Proposal

A Call for Proposal (CfP) will be issued for each scheduling period. The EA-ARC is responsiblefor distributing the CfP among the East Asian user community, along with any supporting materialand software tools. The CfP will inform the community about the available capabilities and provide
necessary information for the submission of proposals. The EA-ARC staﬀ identify areas of work
prior to the call, update webpages, and issue announcements. The EA-ARC contributes to thevarious stages in the entire process, “phase 1” and “phase 2”, data processing and delivery in thefollowing ways.

4.2.

“Phase 1”: Proposal preparation.

Phase 1 comprises simply proposal preparation and submission. ALMA proposals must be
prepared with the Observing Tool (OT) (requiring registration in the Science Portal), and must
include a scientific and technical justifications, targets and spectral settings, sensitivity andintegration time estimation, atmospheric conditions requirements (e.g. transparency andatmospheric conditions).

4.3.

Proposal assessment

ARC involvement of the proposal assessment is actually minimal, and restricted to assisting of
proposal handling duties. Although ARC staff will be allowed to become the scientific reviewer,such an involvement is made by individual effort basis, not by an ARC duty. The proposal
assessment process is briefly described here for the benefit of the EA-ARC constituent.
1. First-cut triage: As upwards of one thousand proposals are again expected for Cycle 6
observations, a first-cut “triage” of submitted proposals is undertaken (projects can be triaged
out from further review, only after the agreement of the three Scientific Assessors (see the‘panel review’ bullet point below).

2. Technical assessment: Where appropriate, remaining proposals will be assessed for ‘technicalfeasibility’ by JAO staﬀ. The technical assessment occurs over approximately a week andassesses the practicality of the proposal from a technical aspect, the scientific content of the
proposal is not considered in depth (see also section 4.4).
3. Panel review: Proposals submitted to any category is reviewed by one of two or three panels,
comprising approximately ten field-experts with the help by secretary from ARCs. Each
proposal is reviewed in detail by three panel members (one “primary science assessor” andalso two “secondary science assessors”), for discussion by the panel during the panel meeting.
The outcome of the proposal review panels is a single rank-ordered list of the proposals
allocated to that panel.
4. Committee review and rank merging: The final stage of proposal assessment and ranking is
the responsibility of a proposal review committee, comprised of the chair and deputy chairpersons of each proposal review panel. The outcome of the proposal review committee is asingle, rank-ordered list of proposals, formed from merging the panel lists including all Executive
regions. Large program will have an extra step in the committee review. For more detail about
review process, see the Proposers Guide.

4.4.

“Phase 2”: Preparation for observations

The “Phase 2” stage is the conversion of the project requirements into observational parameters(e.g. frequency tunings, calibration schemes, etc.) In Cycles 0-4, this was performed by ARC staﬀ
or the PI. From Cycle 5 however, the process was simplified and the PIs did not need to examine
the (typically information-rich) Phase II process. Instead, successful PIs simply access theirproject after approval, and confirm the observations information within is correct and re-submit itback to the observatory. Minor changes to the observations can be implemented easily during thisstage, however larger changes (modifying targets/frequencies, large position changes, etc.)
require first the approval of the Change Request Standing Committee, and a Helpdesk ticket
should be submitted outlining the changes and including a complete justification. Requests for
significant changes may cause long delays in completion of the phase 2 information and delaysin the SB’s being committed to the observing queue.

4.5.

Data reduction & data software and archive support.

During and after observations are complete, JAO and the ARCs execute a series of quality
assurance (QA) checks. As ALMA matures, we expect an ever-greater quantity of data (but notall) will be processed using the automated ‘pipeline’ processing. Remaining data will continue
to be processed manually, using processing scripts. The complete data- product package(containing raw data, calibration tables, scripts, QA reports, logs, and data products) will bemade available to the PI from the EA-ARC archive through password-protected, web-based
data distribution. PIs can continue to request assistance or information from their contact scientist
via the Helpdesk system after data delivery, or a direct Face-to-face meeting request can be made,again via the Helpdesk (see section 3.3). Where appropriate, the EA-ARC may collaborate or
support the development of modified pipeline versions and advanced simulation tools.

5. ARC nodes
Taiwanese and Korean ARC nodes make effort for the user support in each country and also
contributes to the EA-ARC core functions. Each node has its own areas of expertise. Users areencouraged to visit the individual ARC node web pages to obtain the most up-to-date information.

5.1.

The Taiwanese ARC node at ASIAA in Taipei

Located in ASIAA, the Taiwanese ARC node was established in November 2009, as a branch of theNA- and EA-ARCs. The role of the ARCs is classified into two categories, "core functions" and"enhanced functions", and the Taiwanese ARC node collaborates with the EA-ARC for the corefunctions and with the NA-ARC for the enhanced functions. The Taiwanese ARC node serves all the
ALMA user community at universities and research institutes in Taiwan, and offers support for theALMA proposal and observational preparation, data reduction and data analysis. It also offers theopportunity to provide the best possible training for the staff from Universities. The Taiwanese node
provides f2f support and accepts inquiries through email and telephone. This support is in particularreaching out to the Universities in Taiwan.
The Taiwanese ARC node provides several powerful data reduction workstations with memory up to
512 GB and a Lustre file system with total capacity more than 600 TB mounted on ALMA servers via
100Gb/s Infiniband for our users to reduce and analyze their ALMA data.

5.2.

The Korean ARC node at KASI in Daejong

Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (‘KASI’) has established the ALMA group for operating
the Korean-node of the East Asian ALMA Regional Center (EA-ARC), developing the multi-beamreceiver systems of the Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment (ASTE) and ALMA Total Power(TP) Array collaborating with National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) (seehttp://alma.kasi.re.kr).
Korean-node closely collaborates with the EA-ARC center of Japan and Taiwan-node aiming for the
successful operation of ALMA telescope and the fruitful scientific results in this region. For example, wehold the annual EA ALMA Science workshop by turns. KASI ALMA group hosted the 5th science
workshop in November 2017.
Korean-node has supported the community related with all the activities of ALMA observations, dataprocessing, and analysis. We held ‘Town meeting‘ at Seoul National University (SNU; 23 March),
Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS; 30 March), and KASI (04 April), which provided users withinformation on current ALMA capabilities, hands-on sessions using the Observing Tool and CASA for
proposal preparation and ALMA science cases. We also held the ALMA Summer School to encourage
graduated students and postdocs to utilize the ALMA Achieve data at Sobaek Mountain Observatory inAugust 21-25, 2017. Korean-node staff served as an Astronomers-on-Duty (AoD) at the Operations
Support Facility in Chile for 2 weeks during the term in July.