Atacama Large Millimetre / submillimetre Array (ALMA) Telescope

Subject : Science and technology

Section: Space Technology

Concept :

The Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA), a radio telescope comprising 66 antennas is set to get software and hardware upgrades.
It will help it collect much more data and produce sharper images than ever before, the journal Science reported recently.
The most significant modernisation made to ALMA will be the replacement of its correlator, a supercomputer that combines the input from individual antennas and allows astronomers to produce highly detailed images of celestial objects.

About Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) Telescope:

It is a state-of-the-art radio telescope that studies celestial objects at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths.
It is located in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile.
They can penetrate through dust clouds and help astronomers examine dim and distant galaxies and stars out there.
It also has extraordinary sensitivity, which allows it to detect even extremely faint radio signals.
The telescope consists of 66 high-precision antennas, spread over a distance of up to 16 km.
It is operated under a partnership between the United States, and 16 countries in Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Chile.
The radio telescope was designed, planned and constructed by the US’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

What are some of the notable discoveries made by ALMA?

Over the years, it has helped astronomers make groundbreaking discoveries, including that of starburst galaxies and the dust formation inside supernova 1987A.
It had observed the detailed images of the protoplanetary disc surrounding HL Tauri which is a very young T Tauri star in the constellation Taurus, approximately 450 light years from Earth.
It helped scientists observe a phenomenon known as the Einstein ring, which occurs when light from a galaxy or star passes by a massive object en route to the Earth, in extraordinary detail.

Why is ALMA located in Chile’s Atacama Desert?

ALMA is situated at an altitude of 16,570 feet (5,050 metres) above sea level on the Chajnantor plateau in Chile’s Atacama Desert as the millimetre and submillimetre waves observed by it are very susceptible to atmospheric water vapour absorption on Earth.
Moreover, the desert is the driest place in the world, meaning most of the nights here are clear of clouds and free of light-distorting moisture — making it a perfect location for examining the universe.

Atacama Desert

The Atacama Desert is a 600-mile-long (1,000 kilometers) plateau in the north of Chile, near the borders of Peru, Bolivia and Argentina in South America.
The Atacama Desert is the driest nonpolar desert in the world, as well as the only true desert to receive less precipitation than the polar deserts.
In fact, it is so dry that some weather stations in the desert have never recorded a single drop of rain.
As a result of these harsh conditions, plant and animal life is almost non-existent, particularly in the lower Atacama Desert.
The northern coastal areas, however, do receive a little more rainfall, and as a result, are less arid.