by Simran Jayasinghe
Do you ever look at the stars before you go to sleep? My sisters and I do. We have a star projector by “Museum Tour Toys”, that projects constellations, and stars on our bedroom ceiling. Do you wish that you could see what stars look like up close? I wish I could. I would need a telescope to do that. Maybe I would need the worlds most powerful telescope!
ALMA is the most powerful telescope in the world. It is 10 times better than the Hubble Space Telescope, which you have probably heard about. ALMA stands for Atacama Large Millimeter Array. As the name suggests the telescope is in the Atacama Desert in Chile a country in South America. The telescope is so powerful, and sensitive, that it needed to be in a very dry place, so there would be no interference from clouds. Scientists selected the Chajnantor Plateau in the Atacama Desert to build ALMA. Chajnantor Plateau is 5,000 meters above sea level. It is very dry, with almost no rainfall the whole year so there are no clouds.
ALMA is made out of 66 antennas, or individual telescope parts. Each antenna dish has either a diameter of 12 meters or 7 meters. 25 antennas were provided by the European Southern observatory, 25 by the U.S. National Radio Astronomy observatory, and 16 antennas were provided by the National Astronomical observatory in Japan. It took 10 years to build ALMA and scientists began carrying out research at the telescope in 2011. ALMA is controlled by a machine called the ALMA correlator. The correlator is a super computer that controls all the antennas, and records the information ALMA discovers. The correlator, does so much work that it needs an entire air-conditioned floor to keep it cool!
When the telescope only had 33 of its 66 antennas in place, ALMA took pictures of colliding galaxies, and sugar molecules circling a star! That’s really seeing things up close! Many scientists from around the world hope to see more extraordinary things from ALMA now that all of the antennas are working.
For more information go to :
Great share!
Mind if I translated a small portion of this post in my Russian blog? I would definitely give you all due credit for your work of course.