Science Objectives
- Detect spectral-line emission from CO or CII in a normal galaxy like the Milky Way at a redshift of z = 3, in less than 24 hours of observation.
- Image the redshifted dust continuum emission from evolving galaxies at epochs of formation as early as z = 10.
- Image the gas kinematics in protostars and in protoplanetary disks around young Sun-like stars at a distance of 150 pc (roughly the distance of the star-forming clouds in Ophiuchus or Corona Australis), enabling the study of their physical, chemical, and magnetic-field structures and to detect the tidal gaps created by planets undergoing formation in the disks.
- Provide precise images at an angular resolution of 0.1 arcseconds (ie. being able to represent correctly, within the noise level, the sky brightness at all points where the brightness is greater than 0.1% of the peak image brightness).
Contact Information
North American ALMA Science Center (NAASC)
520 Edgemont Road
Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475
Phone: 434-296-0211
Fax: 434-296-0278
Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA)
The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) will be the premier millimeter and submillimeter telescope in the world. It is under construction in the Altiplano region of northern Chile and, when completed in about 2012, will combine an array of up to 64 12-m antennas with an additional compact array supplied by Japan. ALMA will study many fundamental problems in astronomy such as the origins of planetary systems and the nature of early galaxies.
The ALMA project is an international partnership among Europe, North America, and Japan, in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The project is funded in North America by the NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada, in Europe by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and Spain, and in Japan by the National Institute of Natural Sciences. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of North America by the NRAO, on behalf of Europe by ESO, and on behalf of Japan by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
ALMA will be a truly transformational instrument for studying the cool universe—the relic radiation of the Big Bang and the molecular gas and dust that constitute the very building blocks of stars, planetary systems, galaxies, and life itself. This material typically has temperatures of 3 K to 100 K, resulting in spectral-energy distributions peaking at submillimeter to far-infrared wavelengths. Most of the electromagnetic energy in the Universe lies in two thermal components—the cosmic background and the far-infrared background—within the ALMA wavelength range l = 1 cm to 0.3 mm (30–950 GHz). Indeed, the peak of the spectral-energy distribution for dusty objects in the distant universe is redshifted entirely to submillimeter wavelengths.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.