ALMA Data Quality Assurance and the Products it Delivers - The Contribution of the European ARC

Abstract

From its inception, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) was intended to be accessible to all astronomers, including those who are more used to carrying out their research at other wavelengths. Since the beginning of science observations in September 2011, ALMA has therefore applied a comprehensive Quality Assurance (QA) process to the observed data before delivering them to the principal investigators (PIs). This huge investment, unique for a ground-based (non-survey) observatory of this calibre, results in fully calibrated datasets as well as high-quality images that allow the PIs to assess the quality of their data upon delivery and that provide an advanced starting point for the scientific analysis. In this article we provide a summary of the purpose and status of ALMA QA, a brief description of the QA process and the resulting ALMA data products, and a discussion of how the ALMA user profits from them.