ALMA NRAO News March 2007

ALMA News

  • March 07, 2007: ALMA Achieves Major Milestone With Antenna-Link Success

  • The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) reached a major milestone on March 2, when two ALMA prototype antennas were first linked together as an integrated system to observe an astronomical object.

    The milestone achievement, technically termed "First Fringes," came at the ALMA Test Facility (ATF) on the grounds of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's (NRAO) Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico.

    Faint radio waves emitted by the planet Saturn were collected by the two ALMA antennas, then processed by new, state-of-the-art electronics to turn the two antennas into a single, high-resolution telescope system, called an interferometer.The successful Saturn observation began at 7:13 p.m., U.S. Mountain Time Friday (0213 UTC Saturday). The planet's radio emissions at a frequency of 104 GigaHertz (GHz) were tracked by the ALMA system for more than an hour.

    Read the NRAO Press Release


  • Mar 2, 2007: ESO ALMA Newsletter (11th edition)

  • Contents:
    • Operations Support Facility
    • ALMA and Joint ALMA Office people
    • Antenna Transporter
    • ALMA Project Scientist and Deputy appointed
    • ALMA Science meeting in Madrid
    • Upcoming events

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