15 dense molecular cloud regions ALMA images

The ALMA-IMF Large Program is a survey of fifteen dense molecular cloud regions spanning a range of evolutionary stages that aims to measure the core mass function (CMF). We describe the data acquisition and calibration done by the ALMA observatory and the subsequent calibration and imaging we performed.

The image products are combinations of multiple 12m array configurations created from a selection of the observed bandwidth using multi-term, multi-frequency synthesis imaging and deconvolution. The data products are self-calibrated and exhibit substantial noise improvements over the images produced from the delivered data. We compare different choices of continuum selection, calibration parameters, and image weighting parameters, demonstrating the utility and necessity of our additional processing work.