Japan joins Europe and the USA to work the giant telescope 'ALMA'
Researchers from Europe, Japan and the USA have agreed to collaborate to build and operate a giant radio telescope in cooperation with the republic of Chile, where the telescope will be located. The planned Atacama large millimetre/submillimetre array (ALMA) will have a radio telescope made up of 64 transportable antennas - each 12 metres in diameter - spread over 14 km. 'By pointing all the antennas in unison toward a single astronomical object, and combining the signals detected by all the antennas with a super-fast digital signal processor, the gigantic radio telescope achieves an imaging detail ten times better than that of the Hubble Space telescope,' says a spokesperson from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). 'The combined area of all 64 antennae used to collect signals from celestial objects is more than 40 times larger than that available to astronomers using existing submillimeter telescopes.' ALMA will be built 5000 metres above sea level on the Andean plateau near the Atacama desert of northern Chile. The site has been chosen for its exceptional dryness, which is best for astronomical observations at low wavelengths of light (between the radio and far-infrared). Researchers hope the telescope will produce valuable images that will have a profound impact on all fields of astrophysical research. 'The most important targets include the most distant (i.e. the youngest) galaxies as they emerge in the early Universe,' says the ESO spokesperson. 'In our own galaxy, ALMA will study the morphology, the motions and the chemistry of dust-enshrouded regions where stars and planets are being formed.' ALMA merges three existing large projects - the United States' millimetre array (MMA), Europe's Large southern array (LSA), and Japan's large millimetre submillimtre array (LMSA). The development and design of ALMA began when the US and European projects merged in 1999. Canada's National research council is also participating on the US side of the project. The telescope should be fully operational in 2010.