Doc 8.15, ver. 1.1 | March, 2021

ALMA Science Archive Manual

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 redirected automatically to the nearest ALMA Regional Centerat ESO, NAOJ or NRAO.

Version

Date

Editors

4.1.0.x

March 2016

5.1.0.x

March 2017

6.1.0.x

March 2018

7.1.0.x

March 2019

8.1.0.x

March 2020

8.2.0.x

March 2021

Felix Stoehr, Eric Murphy, Mark Lacy, Stéphane Leon, Erik
Muller, Kouchiro Nakanishi
Brenda Matthews, Felix Stoehr, Mark Lacy, Kouchiro Nakanishi,
Stéphane Leon
Brenda Matthews, Felix Stoehr, John Hibbard, Kouchiro Nakanishi, Kuo-Song Wang, Stéphane Leon
Felix Stoehr, Brenda Matthews, Kuo-Song Wang, Adele Plunkett,Rie Miura
Felix Stoehr, Brenda Matthews, Kuo-Song Wang, Adele Plunkett,
Patricio Sanhueza
Felix Stoehr, Adele Plunkett, Andy Lipnicky, Brenda Matthews,
Kuo-Song Wang, Patricio Sanhueza

In publications, please refer to this document as:
F. Stoehr et al. 2020, ALMA Science Archive Manual, ALMA Doc. 8.15 v1.0

Contents
1 Introduction

1

2 Science Portal

3

3 Science Archive5

1.1 Quickstart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2 User support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1 Archive Data and Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2 Project access delegation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.6
3.7

Content and policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Querying the ALMA Science Archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Browsing the results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Selecting the les for download . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Visualizing the data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Downloading the data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Data packaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.7.1 Directory structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.7.2 Cycle 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.7.3 Cycle 1 and later . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.8 Sensitivity estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.9 Precipitable water vapour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1
1

3
3

5
5
7
9
11
11
12
12
13
13
13
13

4 Programmatic access

15

5 Scientic exploitation of the data

17

6 Acknowledgement statement

19

7 Frequently asked questions

21

4.1 astroquery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2 VO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3

15
16

This page was intentionally left almost blankChapter 1

Introduction
1.1 Quickstart
Searching for and downloading ALMA data is done in a few easy steps:
1. Place search constraints into the Query Form (top left corner) at https://almascience.org/asax
2. Use the checkboxes to select observations of interest and hit "Request download" (top right)
3. Use the checkboxes to select les of interest and hit "Download selected"
4. Use one of the proposed download methods to save the selected les onto your computer
The functionalities oered by the ALMA Science Archive (ASA) for each of these four steps are detailed in
sections 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 and 3.6, respectively.

1.2 User support
In each of the three partner regions an ALMA Regional Centre (ARC) has been established1 . Each ARC provides
scientic user support in the core areas of proposal preparation (Phase 1), observation program preparation(Phase 2) and data analysis to users in their respective communities. The ARCs also host a full copy of the
ALMA Archive and deliver data packages to users. The ARCs are the ALMA interfaces to the users.
Please do not hesitate to contact the ARCs or ARC nodes through the ALMA Helpdesk2 for any question orcomment. In particular we strongly enourage requests for face-to-face visits with the experts at one of the ARCsor ARC nodes for archival research purposes. All ARCs and ARC nodes have computing facilities available.

1 https://almascience.org/about-alma/alma-organization
2 https://help.almascience.org

1Chapter 2

Science Portal
Each ARC maintains a full copy of the ALMA archive and hosts one of the three ALMA Science Portals (SP).
From the toplevel link https://www.almascience.org, you will be automatically redirected to the SP of yourclosest ARC and your ALMA credentials are valid at each of them following the "single-sign-on" principle.
To obtain ALMA data, click on the "Data" entry in the top menu of the Science Portal. Here you will nd links
to the four types of ALMA data: Archive: ALMA data taken for PI programs
 Large Programs: Data products returned by the PIs for ALMA Large Programs
 Calibrator Catalogue: Information on calibration sources, including ux histories
 Science Verication: ALMA data taken for Science Verication

In addition, there is the top-menu item "Processing" which amongst other items contains information on thedata processing performed by the Observatory and indications of the computing resources required to re-reduce
data at your home institution should you wish to do so.

2.1 Archive Data and Documents
The Archive link takes you directly to the Science Archive Query Interface. The sub-menu item "Archive
documentation" includes links to the latest documents describing ALMA data products (including Cycle 0) anda table of recent updates, tips and tricks, and known issues.
Useful documents available from the Documentation menu of the ALMA Science Portal include the User's
Guide for ALMA Pipeline, descriptions of the ALMA quality assurance for data products ("QA2") and CASA
documentation (see also Section 3.7).

2.2 Project access delegation
A PI can grant access rights to Co-Is or any other registered ALMA user directly from the ALMA Science Portal.
To do this, the PI should authenticate using the "Log in" button in the top right corner of the Science Portal,
click on their username and select "Prole" from the menu. Then, the "Project delegation" tab is accessed using
the "Next" button in the upper right. Once in the Project delegation tab, select the "Add delegee" button on
the bottom left and select which project you wish to add a delegated user to. Finally, at the bottom select theaccess level you wish the user to have, type their name into the other eld to nd them, and click "Save". Users
who are granted access via the project delegation mechanism can log in to any of the three ARCs with theirown account and can download the data from there. Data access is always granted to entire projects rather than
individual deliveries from a project. Delegating access to a project does not allow the delegee to grant project3

access to others.

Chapter 3

Science Archive
3.1 Content and policies
The ALMA Science Archive (ASA) contains all public and proprietary data of PI-proposal observations.
ALMA is currently producing roughly 500TB worth of raw-data and reduced data products per year. These
data are stored at the Joint ALMA Observatory in Santiago, Chile and are copied from there to the three ARCs.
Each ARC holds a complete copy of the ASA. (See chapter 14 of the Technical Handbook1 for details.)
ALMA data from Regular and Large Programs are protected by a proprietary period of 12 months, after which
they become public. The proprietary period of a DDT project data is 6 months. All public data can be accessed
anonymously. Observational metadata (e.g., source names and positions, spectral setups, etc.) are not protectedby a proprietary period and are available directly from the ASA as soon as the data have passed the rst stepof quality control, QA0.
Data from calibration observations carried out during PI observations have no proprietary period. As theseobservations are contained in the data les of the proprietary data, it is currently not possible to extract them inan automatic fashion. Should you be interested in calibrator data contained in proprietary observations, pleasewrite a ticket to the ALMA Helpdesk, and we will extract the data for you on a best-eort basis.
Please refer to the ALMA Users' policies2 for details.

3.2 Querying the ALMA Science Archive
The new ALMA Science Archive Query interface can be directly reached at https://almascience.org/asax.
The main input form appears when you hover over the search eld in the top left corner. Sources can be queried
either by name or by a position on the sky specied in Right Ascension and Declination or Galactic coordinates.
The name resolver uses Sesame3 to perform a semi-case-insensitive search for a source name. A search radius inarcmin can be added to the end of the name search separated by a comma (e.g., "Arp220, 1"), where the default
radius is 10 arcmin. Sesame (via NED, Simbad and VizieR) will parse names commonly found throughout theliterature and return search coordinates. Sources can also be queried by their ALMA name, which is the nameof the source as entered by the PI in the Observing Tool (OT). For this case, partial matches through wildcards(?, *) and boolean OR expressions ("|") can be used.
The query is executed instantaneously without you having to click on a search button or to hit return.
Various other constraints can be placed on a query to the ALMA Science Archive. As Figure 3.2 shows, they
have been grouped into the following ve categories: Position, Energy, Project, Publication, and Observation.
1 https://almascience.eso.org/documents-and-tools/latest/alma-technical-handbook
2 https://almascience.eso.org/documents-and-tools/latest/alma-user-policies
3 http://cds.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/Sesame5Autocompletion is enabled in all text elds except for the Source Name (Resolver) eld, allowing for easier search.
In addition to the single source search, a target list can be uploaded. Note that despite the suggestions from the
autocompletion, the full set of operations (including wildcards and OR) is available.
Each query constraint comes with a tooltip help that provides a description, the units in case of queries forphysical parameters, and examples. Clicking on an example will insert it directly into the query constraint eld.

.
Figure 3.1: The archive query interface.
Query constraints in addition to those mentioned above include: angular resolution (00) maximum recoverable scale (00) continuum sensitivity (mJy/beam)
 line sensitivity (10km/s) (mJy/beam)
 sky frequency (GHz) spectral resolution (kHz) ALMA receiver band number observation date
 polarization type the title and abstract of the project as well as of ALMA publications

During the observing process, ALMA observes calibrator sources in addition to science observations requestedby the PI. These are planets and quasars. Check the "Calibration observations" checkbox to include thoseobservations in the search. It is also possible to restrict the search to data that are already public and out of the
proprietary period.
The query elds support a large number of operators. A full list of the capabilities can be accessed from theHelp menu item of the three-bar-icon in the top right corner of the interface.
We also provide search on the scientic keywords that PIs specify when writing the proposals. These permit
search for data per science topic. In addition we create scientic categories from those keywords to easier selectentire scientic areas. Note that the categories we provide are dierent from the categories in the OT: the latterdo change from cycle to cycle.
The maximum recoverable scale and the angular resolution computations use the 5%ile and 80%ile of the projected baseline lengths which is an improvement over previous calculations and also matches the way thosequantities are computed in the ALMA Observing Tool and during ALMA's quality assurance.
The query constraints that have been placed are shown in the top row and can be easily removed, inverted or
toggled on/o.

3.3 Browsing the results
The result of the query is immediately presented in the result table as well as in the sky view and the frequency
view. All three viewers are linked.
The sky view shows the spatial coverage of the observations and is based on AladinLite4 . It will perform autozooming after a query to show the query results in an optimal way. If the sources are spread widely over thesky, instead of showing thousands of individual footprints a grid is displayed where the brightness of a grid-cellis proportional to the density of the observations in that cell.
If a coordinate or Sesame search is executed, the interface shows the currently used search radius as well as thecentre location in blue. Zooming and panning with the mouse is supported. In addition, observations can behighlighted or selected by hovering or clicking on a footprint. The corresponding result-table row will scroll into
sight.

.
Figure 3.2: The results of an archive query. Each row entry has a footprint shown over a (selectable) sky
background. Hovering over the observation row will highlight the footprint of that observation. The spectral
coverage of the observations is shown in the right-hand panel.
The spectral coverage of the observations displayed in the result table is shown in the frequency view window.
The yellow bars indicate the combined spectral coverage of the observations. A typical atmospheric transmission
curve at the ALMA site helps guide the eye.
When proposing, PIs can enter the redshifts/velocites into the OT. We compute the median value of redshifts of
the observations in the result table where they are available. This redshift is then used to display typical ALMA
4 https://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/AladinLite

lines on top of the transmission curve. The estimated redshift can be overridden manually.
Zooming in, either with the mouse or by moving the bounds of the zoom window, will show more and more lines
always following their relevance for ALMA which was determined by the number of times a line was targeted by
an ALMA proposal. The list of lines to display can be modied by specifying directly a specic set of moleculesin the "Lines" lter box or by using one of the pre-selected categories from Splatalogue5 .
The result table shows the values of the query. The results are available in three tabs where each row corresponds
to one observation, one ALMA project or one Publication, respectively. In all three views, powerful subltering
capabilities are available. The sublters only act on the results of the given tab - as opposed to the query
constraints that are reached at the top left of the interface. Like the query constraints, sublter constraints canbe removed, inverted, or toggled easily.
You can click on the headers of the columns to sort the table by the values of the particular column.
A red background of the checkbox in the left-most column indicates that the data are still in their proprietary
period. In that case, the release date column provides an active link that you can use to add a reminder/event
to your calendar (e.g. Google, Live, Yahoo!, iCal) to notify you when the data proprietary period ends.
Data without an available checkbox in the left column is either in the process of acquiring more data or in theprocess of being reduced and quality controlled. In rare cases, users may nd and report problems with the datathat has been delivered to them. In these cases, no checkbox for download is presented on the interface either,and the value in the "Release date" column is set to "In QA3" until the problem has been resolved.
The three icons on the left-hand side, next to the checkboxes for data selection, recenter the spatial and spectral
viewers to the bounds of that particular row, respectively.
Several cells in the result table provide additional information, and these active cells are indicated with a slightly
darker colour. For example hovering over the project code link shows the full abstract of the proposal. It also
displays the acknowledgement, using that project code, which must be copied and pasted into any publication
making us of the ALMA data. Indeed, it is ALMA policy that this statement, including the correct data-link,must be placed into all publications making use of ALMA data (see also section 6).
One ALMA observation, and thus one row in the Results table under the "Observations", display tab canhave several Spectral Windows (spw) that were observed simultaneously. Although the query constraints onfrequencies (frequency, bandwidth, spectral resolution) indeed do query against the values of the individual
spectal windows in the ASA database, only the observations for which a matching spw have been found are
displayed. The list of spectral windows is available by hovering over the "frequency support" cells.
All columns of the result table are visible and accessible by horizontal scrolling. The column order can bechanged by dragging and dropping or by using the column selection tool which is accessible at the top rightof the result-table widget. Of particular interest might be the columns "Array" and "Mosaic" which give the
ALMA array (12m, 7m, TP) and the pointing pattern, respectively.
The result table can also be exported to VOTable, TSV or CSV format or sent through the SAMP protocol toan application like Aladin or Topcat. Note that due to the security model of modern web-browsers this featuremight not work everywhere.
In addition to being able to place constraints on the titles, authors or abstracts of publications resulting from
ALMA data, we oer the publication count constraint. Setting this to 0 and selecting "public data only" shows
public but yet unpublished ALMA data.
The Results Bookmark/share link in the top right of the page provides you with a link that will instantly reexecute the search of the results that are currently being viewed. This is helpful when you want to send theresults of a query to a colleague or just when you want to repeat the same query at a later period. As mentioned
in section 3.1, the metadata of the observations are public as soon as those data have been observed. Therefore,
at any given time the results do indeed match the current state of the ALMA observations.
5 https://www.cv.nrao.edu/php/splat/3.4 Selecting the les for download
You can select data available for download with the checkbox in the left-most column of the Results Table. To
select all available data for download, simply check the box at the top left of the table. Hitting the download iconin the top right corner starts the ALMA Request Handler (RH), which will open in a separate tab or window(see Figure 3.4). If at least some of the selected data are still in their proprietary period and if you are notalready authenticated, the RH will ask you to authenticate. Otherwise the RH will immediately display the listof tar les that can be downloaded. A green check mark indicates the les for which you have access rights.

.
Figure 3.3: The results of a download request. This query selects only one project. Semipass data are notselected in the top boxes, so data having this status are not selected for download.
If authenticated, you will receive an email notication. This email also contains a link to the request in the RH.
You might also decide to authenticate despite the fact that the data you would like to download are all out ofthe proprietary period in case you want to come back to the request. Indeed, a list of the last 20 (authenticated)
requests can be obtained by clicking on the "My requests" link in the top right corner of the RH for authenticatedusers.
In the RH, select which les you would like to download using the selection boxes as shown in Figure 3.3.
At this stage, you have the option of downloading the available data products as well as the associated raw data
as tar les. Either by selecting the check-boxes (see Fig. 3.4) or, as all les on the RH page are links, directly
through your browser with a right-click and `Save as ...'.
For all cycles (except Cycle 0) the data products themselves (FITS les) and the auxiliary products (log-les,
scripts, quality reports) are available in separate tar les. Users who want to recreate the calibrated Measurement
Sets (MS) (see also chapter 5) from the raw data therefore do not have to download the FITS products anymore
but can just download the auxiliary tar le as well as the raw data. On the other hand, users who are onlyinterested in the FITS products do not have to download the les provided in the auxiliary tar package anymore.
In addition, you can also select individual data-product les for download. In this case a small grey arrow isdisplayed infront of the 'products' and 'auxiliary' product tar les which allows you to expand the tar le content
and select the les needed.
ALMA data do have quite a deep data hierarchy6 . Each Science Goal entered into the ALMA Observing Toolis organized into Observing Unit Sets (OUS) by ALMA according to the following rules: observations that canbe observed and calibrated together and independently are placed in a Member OUS. If observations that haveto be combined from several Member OUS, those Member OUS are placed into the same Group OUS.
This hierarchy means that when you select specic targets in the Results Table, the data that will be displayedin the resulting Request hierarchy will include the data for all targets that were observed in the same parent
Member OUS, as well as all targets observed in associated Member OUSs (ones with the same parent Group
6 see e.g. Section 8.1. of https://almascience.org/documents-and-tools/cycle5/alma-technical-handbook

.
Figure 3.4: As above but with the expanded le-contents of the auxiliary tar le.

OUS). You can display the list of all science targets observed as part of each Member OUS by expanding the SBtree which appears directly below the Member OUS le icon (see Fig. 3.5). So for instance, if you select the 12-m
data for a specic protoplanetary disk in the Results Table, and that object was observed as part of a survey ofsuch disks that included multiple 12-m congurations, as well as 7-m and TP observations, the Request Handler
results will include the 4 Member OUS for each conguration component, and the products listing will include
all protoplanetary disks observed in each of those Member OUS.
Currently two types of les are available for download: les containing the data products (FITS les, quality assessment results, scripts, log les, calibration andagging tables).

 les containing the ALMA raw data (ALMA Science Data Model, ASDM)

The type of the le is indicated in the data hierarchy column.
Data marked with "semipass" are data which may be useful, but are known to have issues which lead them tobe excluded from the creation of the data-products (e.g., missing calibrators, too little science data). The nameof the Scheduling Block that was used to aquire the data is shown to make it easier to understand which data
are contained in the products.
With the checkboxes on the top the dierent categories of products can be selected quickly.
As mentioned before, there are three individual archives at the ARCs and thus three individual RHs available.
You can download data from any of the three ARCs. Note, however, that data requests are not transferrable. If
you want to download data from a dierent ARC you need to create a new request.

3.5 Visualizing the data
All of the main ALMA science FITS les (except Cycle 0) can be visualized directly in your browser throughthe Cube Analysis and Rendering Tool for Astronomy (CARTA7 ). CARTA utilizes client-server architecture,parallelization, GPU-accelerated rendering, and various latency-hiding techniques. The user interacts throughthe client interface running natively in their local web browser. Large images (TB-size ready) hosted from aremote server can be visualized within seconds. This makes it the ideal software to integrate with the ASA.
In the Request Handler view with the expanded products, CARTA icons are shown on the right-hand side of theinterface. Once you click on any of them, CARTA will automatically open in a new web browser tab and display
the image (please make sure to allow the ASA to open pop-ups in your web browser rst).
For a spectral cube, clicking on the the z-prole icon at the top will bring up a subwindow showing the spectrum
under the cursor-position along the frequency axis. The Animator tab in the lower right corner allows you toscroll through the channels of a data-cube.
While to open CARTA in the same browser session the RH will open will open a new browser tab for each le,all les are actually available in any of those tabs. By selecting additional les from the "File" menu of CARTA
you can use the Image list tab, register several images together and blink between them, for example.
For detailed information about CARTA please refer to the user manual8 .

.
Figure 3.5: As above but with the expanded le-contents of the auxiliary tar le.

3.6 Downloading the data
ALMA data can be very large. Although a single le can also be downloaded by right-clicking on the link of thele and selecting "Save As .." from the browser menu, to assure ecient downloading and to make good use of
the available bandwidth for ALMA downloads, you should download ALMA data in several parallel download
7 https://cartavis.github.io
8 https://carta.readthedocs.io/en/latest

streams.
After selecting the desired products/data for download, click the Download Selected button in the top-left portionof the window. You will then prompted with two dierent download methods:
 Download Script: A bash download script is created that can be directly run from the command line on

Linux and Mac.

 File List: A new page is opened containing a list of URLs for downloading the data that may be useful forthird-party download managers such as DownThemAll.

The recommended method for downloading data is using the Download Script. This allows one to easily download
to computers that do not have web browsers available (e.g. processing environments). Save the script to yourLinux or Mac, add execute rights, run it. After a successful download, the script will allow you to unpack thetar les directly.
chmod u+x downloadRequest12345.sh./downloadRequest12345.sh

If you prefer to unpack the les later or on a dierent computer, then execute the command:for i in *.tar; do tar -xvf $i; done

Note, when downloading via the le list, please be gentle on the maximum number of parallel streams you areusing at any one given time. 5 is recommended.

3.7 Data packaging
3.7.1

Directory structure

The data are streamed to the user as tar les which allows for the delivery of the ALMA data together with thecomplete directory structure following the ALMA data hierarchy.
The ALMA Archive currently has tarles for either products or "raw" data les (where raw is dened here as
post-correlation, but pre-calibration) in ASDM format9 . A typical package will unpack to a directory structurewith the rst three levels like:2012.1.01234.S/science_goal.uid___A001_X12345_X123/group.uid___A002_X6789ab_X6789/member.uid___A002_Xcdef1_X234/(Note that Cycle 0 data do not have the UIDs for the OUSes appended to the directory names. Instead thedelivery date is appended to the member OUS directory name). In the member... directory there are the following
subdirectories:
calibrated calibration log product qa raw script

and a README le.
The contents of the directories are as follows: The calibration directory contains calibration and ag tables.
 The log directory contains the CASA logs from running the reduction scripts/pipeline.
 The products directory contains the FITS images.
 The qa directory contains the QA2 reports (manual calibration) or the pipeline weblog (pipeline calibra-tion).

9 These raw les are colloquially referred to as ASDMs, but ASDM strictly refers to the data model, not the le. The correct
designation is Execution Block (EB).

 The script directory contains the reduction scripts.
 The contents of the raw and calibrated directories depend on whether the data were from Cycle 0 orfrom later Cycles (see below).

More details about the packaged QA2 products can be found in the data product guide10 .
3.7.2

Cycle 0

Cycle 0 was unique in that calibrated MS were archived together with the data products. The data for each
Member OUS is combined into a set of tar les, the contents of which are linked from the Science Portal11 .
In particular, it is possible from these contents to see which tar les contain the image FITS les for a given
delivery.
Two MS were stored. The rst is a MS with the system temperature (Tsys ) and water vapour radiometer (WVR)
corrections applied. This is stored in the "raw" directory. The second is a fully calibrated MS, stored in the"calibrated" directory. Note that the raw ASDMs are not in the package, but are available from the ARCs uponrequest.
3.7.3

Cycle 1 and later

In Cycle 1 and later, calibrated MS are no longer included in the package. If only the "product" tar le isdownloaded, only the FITS products will be downloaded, as explained above in previous sections. If tar les of
the raw data are downloaded, they will populate a raw directory when they are untarred. For the creation of
the calibrated MS also the "auxiliary" data will have to be downloaded, see Chapter 5.

3.8 Sensitivity estimation
In order to estimate the continuum and line-sensitivities shown on the Archive Query interface, the metadata of
the stored Execution Blocks (EB) that are QA0 Pass are taken and lled into the ALMA sensitivity calculator12 .
These metadata are the requested array (12m, 7m or TP), number of polarisations, integration time, source
declination, antenna number, observing frequency, bandwidth and channel number as well as the information
about the observing conditions. We use the measured Tsys values where they are available and the measurementof the precibitable water vapour (PWV) otherwise unless none is available. In the latter case the default PWV
for the band is used.

3.9 Precipitable water vapour
Where available the median of all the precipitable water vapour (PWV) measurements is reported on the ALMA
query interface. For 7m observations, no such measurements are available and thus, as for the Observing Tooland the ALMA Sensitivity Calculator, the median value of the default PWV values is used.

10 e.g.,https://almascience.org/documents-and-tools/cycle3/ALMAQA2Products3.0.pdf
11 https://almascience.org/alma-data/archive/delivery-list
12 https://almascience.eso.org/proposing/sensitivity-calculator

Chapter 4

Programmatic access
4.1 astroquery

The ASA has been developed so that it can be accessed programatically, i.e. from programs or scripts.
astroquery

Astroquery12 is a python package which allows querying and retrieving data from many large observatories including ALMA. Authentication support for the download of proprietary data is provided as well as the extractionof FITS les only for Cycle 0 data (see also section 3.7.2).
As a simple example, querying the ALMA Archive for the source M83 and retrieving all the corresponding data
is done by
from astroquery.alma import Alma
import numpy# Querying the ALMA Science Archive for source M83
result = Alma.query_object('M83')# Extracting a list of Member ObsUnitSets
member_ous = numpy.unique(result['Member ous id'])# Creating an ALMA astroquery instance and downloading all data the identified Member OUS
myAlma = Alma()
myAlma.cache_location = '/big/external/drive/'
myAlma.retrieve_data_from_uid(member_ous[0])If you encounter errors with astroquery, try updating the code to the last version
pip3 install astroquery --upgrade --prebefore contacting the astroquery team.
Astroquery is a convenient way to query the ASA for a long list of sources. A full set of examples on the usageof the package for ALMA data is available on the astroquery ALMA page (https://astroquery.readthedocs.
org/en/latest/alma/alma.html).
1 https://astroquery.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
2 https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.04520

15

4.2 VO

ALMA is strongly committed to providing VO services for all ALMA data. We are oering Table Access Protocol(TAP) as well as Simple Imaging Protocol (SIAPv2) and DataLink services for ALMA data at https://almascience.org/tap,
https://almascience.org/sia2 and https://almascience.org/datalink, respectively.
External providers oer VO services of the archived FITS products3 . Note that those products cover only asmall fraction of the total number of sources and available spectral range.

3 https://jvo.nao.ac.jp/portal/alma/archive.do, https://www.chivo.cl

Chapter 5

Scientic exploitation of the data
While in a few cases the FITS data-products that are provided by ALMA can be sucient to do science directly,
more often than not users should create their own images from the calibrated Measurement Set data (MS). As
mentioned above, for Cycle 0 the calibrated MS are directly delivered with the data packages. For data later
than Cycle 1, the calibrated MS can be recreated from the raw data by running the commandcasa -c *scriptForPI.py

within the latest version of CASA. For older data (pre Cycle 5) or data that were manually reduced, use theversion of CASA that was used to create the data (see the README le or the QA2 report in the qa directory).
The scriptF orP I.py le can be found the script directory. The calibrated MS will be created in the "calibrated"
directory.
Please see the Processing section1 of the ALMA Science Portal for details. From there, you can follow the links
to understand the contents of the data products, download and install CASA and the hardware requirements for
CASA and the pipeline. CASA also provides guides related to pipeline imaging reprocessing2 .
Moreover the ALMA Regional Centres also provide calibrated MS for PIs and archival researchers. At all three
ARCs services are in place to generate calibrated MS on demand3 .
All users of the archive are welcome to request assistance with calibration and analysis through the ALMA
Helpdesk, and face-to-face visits to the ARCs are advisable when additional assistance is needed.

1 https://almascience.org/processing
2 https://casaguides.nrao.edu/index.php/ALMA_Imaging_Pipeline_Reprocessing
3 https://help.almascience.org/kb/articles/how-do-i-obtain-a-file-of-calibrated-visibilities-measurement-set-for-alma-data

17

Chapter 6

Acknowledgement statement
All publications making use of ALMA data must include the following unaltered statement in the acknowledgement section:"This paper makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA#2011.0.01234.S.
ALMA is a partnership of ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS
(Japan), together with NRC (Canada), MOST and ASIAA (Taiwan), and KASI (Republicof Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is
operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ."
Please substitute the place-holder project code 2011.0.01234.S with the project code of the data used. Should
data from several projects have been used, please use the following notation: ADS/JAO.ALMA#2011.0.01234.S,
ADS/JAO.ALMA#2011.0.01235.S, ADS/JAO.ALMA#2011.0.01236.S.
In addition, publications from NA authors must include the standard NRAO acknowledgement:"The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc."
Readers of the publication can enter either the full data tag or the project code into the "Project code" eld of
the ASA Query Interface (3.2) in order to obtain a list of the corresponding observations. We also use the data
tag to link the publications to the data in the archive which will allow the user to query for publications using
ALMA data in the ASA and also to show all publications related to the displayed data-rows.
If referring to sources detected for rst time in ALMA elds you should follow one of the options of the naming
convention
ALMA JHHMMSS.s+DDMMSSALMA JHHMMSS.ss+DDMMSS.s
ALMA JHHMMSS.sss+DDMMSS.ss
ALMA JHHMMSS.ssss+DDMMSS.sss(approved by IAU "Clearing House" of Commission 5 Working Group on Designations), where J indicates J2000
coordinates.
The coordinates should be truncated according to the precision in the position of the source. Typically thisshould be approximately 1/10th of the size of the synthesized beam used in the discovery observation, e.g.
for a 1" beam, declination should be given to a precision of 0.1" of arc and RA to 0.01s of time (ALMAJHHMMSS.ss+/-DDMMSS.s), for a 0.1" beam declination to 0.01" of arc and RA to 0.001s of time (ALMAJHHMMSS.sss+/-DDMMSS.ss) etc.
19Chapter 7

Frequently asked questions
Please refer to the FAQ/Knowledgebase in the ALMA Science Portal for the answers to frequently asked questions: https://help.almascience.org/kb/archive-data-retrieval
Please do not hesitate to contact us through the ALMA Helpdesk in case you have questions, comments, orsuggestions.

21