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The 'Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array' ('ALMA') is an international astronomy project that consists of an astronomical interferometer formed from an array of radio telescopes, located at Llano de Chajnantor Observatory in the Atacama desert in northern Chile. The telescope is expected to revolutionise modern astronomy by providing an insight on star formation in the early universe and imaging local star and planet formation in great detail. With a cost in excess of 1 billion US dollars, it is the most ambitious ground-based telescope currently under construction.

Contents

Capability

Funding

European Partners

North American Partners

East Asian Partners

Other partners

Assembly

Transporting antennas to the site

General information

Project detail

Project timeline

See also

References

External links

Capability

The telescopes are capable of detecting sub-millimeter and millimeter wavelengths. The array is expected to detect objects more distant than can be detected by any existing instrument and will have far higher resolution than existing sub-millimeter telescopes such as the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope.

Funding

ALMA was initially a 50-50 collaboration between ESO and the North American partners. The array has been extended with the help of the new East Asian, Spanish and Chilean partners[1].

European Partners

★ European Southern Observatory and the European Regional Support Center

★ Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology

North American Partners

★ National Science Foundation via the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the North American ALMA Science Center

★ National Research Council of Canada

East Asian Partners

★ National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) under the National Institutes of National Sciencs (NINS)

★ ALMA-Taiwan at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics (ASIAA)

Other partners

★ Republic of Chile
ALMA is the largest and most expensive ground-based astronomical project currently under construction (current cost estimate is 1.5 billion Y2000 US dollars).

Assembly

The complex will be built primarily by European, US, Japanese and Canadian companies (including General Dynamics) and universities. Three prototype antennas have undergone evaluation at the Very Large Array site in New Mexico since 2002. Alcatel Alenia Space, a consortium of manufacturers from France, Italy, and Germany, has been signed up to provide 25 of the antennas [2], the largest-ever European industrial contract. The first antenna will be delivered in 2007, and the rest at about one per month, finishing in 2011.

Transporting antennas to the site

Transporting the 115-tonne antennas from the base camp at 2900 m altitude to the site at 5000 m presents enormous problems. The solution chosen is to use two purpose-built 28-wheel self-loading heavy haulers of bold design. The vehicles are made by Scheuerle Fahrzeugfabrik in Germany and each is 10m wide, 20m long and 6 m high, weighing 130 tonnes. They are powered by twin 500 kW diesel engines. The transporters, which feature a driver's seat designed to accommodate an oxygen tank to aid breathing the thin high-altitude air, can pick up the antennas and place them precisely at the site. The first vehicle was completed and tested in July 2007.^[1]

General information

ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). NRAO is managed by Associated Universities, Inc (AUI). ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO and Japan by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ).
Administration of the ALMA site in Chile is lead by ESO.

Project detail

★ Up to 50 to 64 antennas of 12 meter diameter located at an elevation of 5,000 m at Llano de Chajnantor Observatory, enhanced by a compact array of 4 x 12m and 12 x 7m antennas (consortium currently considering to build 50 or 64[3][4])

★ Imaging instrument in all atmospheric windows between 10 mm and 350 micrometres

★ Array configurations from approximately 150 meters to 14 km

★ Spatial resolution of 10 milliarcseconds, 10 times better than the Very Large Array (VLA) and the Hubble Space Telescope

★ The ability to image sources arcminutes to degrees across at one arcsecond resolution

★ Velocity resolution under 50 m/s

★ Faster and more flexible imaging instrument than the VLA

★ Largest and most sensitive instrument in the world at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths

★ Point source detection sensitivity 20 times better than the VLA

Project timeline

Timeline

Date	Activity
May 1998	Start of Phase 1 (Design & Development)
June 1999	U.S./European Memorandum of Understanding for Design & Development
February 2003	Final North American / European Agreement, with 50% of funding from ESO, and 50% of funding shared between USA and Canada
September 2004	North American, European & Japanese draft agreement, with Japan providing new extensions to ALMA
October 2004	Opening of Joint ALMA office, Santiago, Chile
October 2005	Groundbreaking at 5000 m altitude Array Operation Site of ALMA
September 2005	Taiwan joins the ALMA Project through Japan
June 2006	N. American, European, & Japanese sign agreement on the Enhanced ALMA
2009	Call for shared-risk early science proposals
2012	ALMA construction complete

See also

★ List of observatories

★ CARMA a sensitive millimeter-wave array operated by a consortium including Caltech, University of California Berkeley, University of Illinois, University of Maryland and University of Chicago.

★ James Clerk Maxwell Telescope The most sensitive existing sub-millimeter telescope

★ Plateau de Bure Interferometer, one of the most successful existing millimeter-wave arrays, which is operated by IRAM.

★ Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment

References

1. "Giant truck set for sky-high task." ''BBC News'' website, 30 July 2007. Retrieved 31 July 2007.

External links

★ Official Chilean ALMA site

★ NRAO ALMA site

★ UK ALMA site

★ ESO ALMA site

★ ALMA on BBC News

★ Webcam showing array construction work at the Operations Support Facility further down the mountain