Images from 70 million light-years ago
November 11th 2011 00:42
Category: Radio Astronomy
The beautiful antenna galaxy in the constellation Corvus,some 70 million light-years from us
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The Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) when fully functional will play a pivotal role in making new discoveries of distant galaxies and the worlds that surround them.
The images provided by these very sensitive instruments will give a better understanding of how the universe evolved. The telescopes are not optical they are very specialised radio telescopes.
Some of the antennas located in Chilie's Chajnator plateau image Garnier
They utilise radio waves and turn them into images much like an optical telescope does only on a much larger scale. The telescopes will form images from the radio waves produced by the stars.
The telescopes will consist of 66 individual radio telescope antennas with a base line of about 16Km in both directions. The diameter of each dish will vary but will consist of a mixture of 12 meter and 7 meter arrays.
The antennas can be moved and re positioned to form different configurations depending on the type of observation needed at the time.
When the system of telescopes are fully connected it will have the sensitivity to be able to image very young proto stars and galaxies at very vast distances.
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The distances involved are truly staggering