ann12035 — Ogłoszenie
Halfway There: 33 ALMA Antennas on Chajnantor
15 maja 2012: On the Chajnantor plateau in northern Chile, construction of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the most complex ground-based astronomy observatory in the world, continues apace. On 12 May 2012, another ALMA antenna was carried up to Chajnantor, bringing the total on the plateau to 33. This marks a half-way point for ALMA, as the telescope will have a total of 66 antennas when completed in 2013. The giant antennas, fifty-four of them with 12-metre-diameter dishes, and twelve with 7-metre-diameter dishes, use sensitive receivers to detect millimetre- and submillimetre-wavelength light from the cosmos. The first of the antennas made the trip up to the 5000-metre-altitude Array Operations Site in September 2009 (see eso0935). Now, as ALMA approaches completion, antennas are arriving at an increasing rate. The state-of-the-art ALMA antennas, which weigh about 100 tonnes each, need a custom-constructed transporter vehicle to move them between the Operations Support Facility and the ...