The Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array
Abstract
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is an international radio telescope under construction in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. ALMA is situated on a dry site at 5000 m elevation, allowing excellent atmospheric transmission over the instrument wavelength range of 0.3 to 10 mm. ALMA will consist of two arrays of high-precision antennas. One, of up to 64 12-m diameter antennas, is reconfigurable in multiple patterns ranging in size from 150 meters up to ~15 km. A second array is comprised of a set of four 12-m and twelve 7-m antennas operating in one of two closely packed configurations ~50 m in diameter. The instrument will provide both interferometric and total-power astronomical information on atomic, molecular and ionized gas and dust in the solar system, our Galaxy, and the nearby to high-redshift universe. In this paper we outline the scientific drivers, technical challenges and planned progress of ALMA.
- Publication:
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IEEE Proceedings
- Pub Date:
- August 2009
- DOI:
- 10.1109/JPROC.2009.2020572
- arXiv:
- arXiv:0904.3739
- Bibcode:
- 2009IEEEP..97.1463W
- Keywords:
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- Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- to be published in Proceedings of the IEEE special issue on radiotelescopes