Doc 5.0, ver. 1| March, 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

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
ALMA and EA-ARC mission goals ..........................................................................5
The East Asian ALMA Regional Center (EA-ARC) ...............................................5
The EA-ARC services. ...............................................................................................5
EA-ARC user support roles .......................................................................................6
EA-ARC Observatory support roles ..........................................................................7
EA Users: Japanese,Taiwanese and Korean regions. ...............................................7
User Communication, Information, news and help ................................................8
The ALMA Science Portal. ........................................................................................8
East Asia ARC and Node information ......................................................................8
The ALMA Helpdesk .................................................................................................8
Support for travel to Mitaka and the nodes. .............................................................9
EA-ARC roles in proposal preparation, observations & data processing ............9Call for Proposal.......................................................................................................9“Phase 1”: Proposal preparation.............................................................................9
Proposal assessment .................................................................................................9“Phase 2”: Preparation for observations...............................................................10
Data reduction & data software and archive support. ...........................................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 Koreannode at KASI, in Daejeon.

Web Resources
ALMA Science portal;
http://almascience.nao.ac.jp
ALMA Helpdesk:
https://help.almascience.org
EA-ARC Webpage:
http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/j/forresearchers/ea-arc/ (NAOJ, Japanese)
http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/e/forresearchers/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 Tutorial & workshops information
http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/e/forresearchers/ea-arc/tutorials/
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 andthe host country, Chile. ALMA comprises 66 high-precision antennas equipped with receiverand digital 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 dynamicscheduling system and innovative calibration strategies, the ALMA system will allow us to makethe best use of the atmospheric 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, 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 muchbroader 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 expertiseavailable 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
Korean oﬃces 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, theservices and facilities are largely consistent throughout.

2.1.

The EA-ARC services.

1. EA-ARC user and observatory support;
EA-ARC staﬀ in all regions includes scientific support staﬀ, computer hardware and software
support and archive maintenance, as well as education and outreach staﬀ. The roles of the
support staﬀ are detailed in section 3.2. Information of the EA-ARC staﬀ is maintained at:

http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/e/forresearchers/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 theseworkshops, information on current and proposed capabilities is discussed, tutorials andhands-on sessions using the Observing Tool and CASA for proposal preparation and data
reduction are also run. 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:
http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/e/forresearchers/ea-arc/tutorials/ (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 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.
Some funding is available for travel and accommodation (See also section 3.4). Requests forFace to face 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
and postdoctorate personnel, who together provide support for research scientists, at allstages 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 data processing, combination of interferometric data and single dish data,
polarimetry and advanced data analysis. The EA-ARC scientific staﬀ, their research interestsand support roles are introduced at:
http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/e/forresearchers/ea-arc/members.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 cognisant 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.
Organise 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 cognisant 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 help
desk 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 help desk for queries to the ARCs, and not private email to the staﬀ, whichcannot be managed by 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 the Contact Scientist and the PI should be made via the ARC Helpdesk.
Contact Scientists will contact users after notification of the proposal submission
outcome, primarily to discuss and finalize the observing process (called “phase 2”),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. In previous cycles, this was accomplished by the Contact Scientists at
the ARCs or the PIs themselves. From Cycle 5, the PIs will not be exposed to thePhase 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 tocommitting the project to the observations queue (see section 4.4 for more detail).

2.3.

EA-ARC Observatory support roles

Assist Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) in the Proposal Review Process.
ARC staﬀ can serve as Technical secretaries, or as Technical Assessors only. In thiscapacity, the Technical secretary provides technical support to the proposal
reviewers. They are not permitted to contribute to scientific assessment during
review of proposals.
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,for a 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 maintain a 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 competing the development of an automatic data reduction pipeline. Given
the extreme diversity of ALMA projects, the development requires significant
manpower and time resources before it can be completed. Projects which cannot
easily be processed using the existing pipeline must be examined on a case-by-casebasis, and processed manually. The processing includes a quality-check before
being uploaded to the ALMA data archive for collection by the PIs.

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 ineither 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 the Project tracker, 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.
http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/j/forresearchers/ea-arc/index.html (Japanese）
http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/e/forresearchers/ea-arc/index.html (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 thehelpdesk is via the science portal, thus users are required to first register with ALMA before
access to the helpdesk system: https://help.almascience.org.
Users should first consult the knowledge base information repository (available in both
Japanese and English; users in Korea and Taiwan should refer to the local node for languagespecific help) - if the information therein is not suitable, then the users should feel free to detailthe specifics of their query in a dedicated helpdesk 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 (“user support specialists” - USS), or redistributed back to the global helpdesk
for the attention of other international experts.
In general, users should not contact the Operations staﬀ directly (i.e. by private email);
helpdesk-submitted tickets are triaged to on-hand staﬀ (ensuring rapid response); staﬀ are notable to personally allocate time resources to communicate with the users directly and using thehelpdesk 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 beaccessed by 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 days of 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 theprocessing of their observations, with nearby ARC/node staﬀ support can make use of travel
and accommodation provided by the ARC and Nodes. In general, support to the ARC andnodes 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. Working disk space is also
provided for raw and processed data, as laptop use may be impractical, considering the ~100
GB 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
material and 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 the various stages in the entire process, “phase 1” and “phase 2”, dataprocessing and delivery in the following ways.

4.2.

“Phase 1”: Proposal preparation.

Phase 1 comprises simply proposal preparation and submission. Submitted 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“technical assessment” (see stage 2 below) and other proposal handling duties. 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 4
observations, a first-cut “triage” of submitted proposals is undertaken (projects can betriaged 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‘technical feasibility’ by ARC and JAO staﬀ. The technical assessment occurs overapproximately a week and assesses 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 and a “technical secretary” who is present only toanswer technical questions from the review panel and take panel votes. Each proposal isreviewed in detail by three panel members (one “primary science assessor” and also 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 allocatedto 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.

4.4.

“Phase 2”: Preparation for observations

The “Phase 2” stage is the conversion of the project requirements into observationalparameters (e.g. frequency tunings, calibration schemes, etc.) In previous Cycles, this was
performed by ARC staﬀ or the PI. From Cycle 5 however, the process will be simplified and thePIs will not need to examine the (typically information-rich) Phase II process.
PIs will not be involved in the Phase II aspect for Cycle 5.
Instead, successful PIs in Cycle 5 will simply access their project after approval by the review
panels, and confirm the observations information within is correct and re-submit it back to theobservatory.
Minor changes to the observations can be implemented easily during this stage, however largerchanges (modifying targets/frequencies, large position changes, etc.) require first the approvalof 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 phase 2 and delays in the SB’s being committed to theobserving 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, and not entirely) will be processed using the automated ‘pipeline’ processing. Remaining
data will continue to be processed manually, using processing scripts. The complete dataproduct package (containing raw data, processed data, calibration tables, scripts, QA reports,
logs, and data products) will be made available to the PI from the EA ARC archive throughpassword-protected, web-based data distribution.
PIs can continue to request assistance or information from their contact scientist via thehelpdesk system after data delivery by email, or a direct Face-to-face meeting request can bemade, 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.