ALMA's new brain: Chile telescope will produce even better images of universe

• The Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) — a radio telescope comprising 66 antennas located in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile is set to get software and hardware upgrades that will help it collect much more data and produce sharper images than ever before.
• 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.

Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA)

• A state-of-the-art telescope that studies celestial objects at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths.
• They can penetrate through dust clouds and help astronomers examine dim and distant galaxies and stars out there.
• The telescope consists of 66 high-precision antennas, spread over a distance of up to 16 km
• Each antenna is outfitted with a series of receivers, and each receiver is tuned to a specific range of wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum.
• The antennas can be moved closer together or farther apart for different perspectives – like the zoom lens of a camera.
• Fully functional since 2013, 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).
• Over the years, it has helped astronomers make groundbreaking discoveries, including that of starburst galaxies and the dust formation inside supernova 1987A.

Why is ALMA located in Chile’s Atacama Desert?

• Location: 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.
• 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.
• “For travelling from Japan, it takes 40 hours to get to the ALMA site in Chile including connection time.
• In spite of such a long distance, the selected site is still the ultimate observing site on Earth with ideal conditions for the ALMA telescope”,
• Science goals of ALMA: Star formation, molecular clouds, early Universe.

Notable discoveries made by ALMA?

• Capturing high-resolution images of gas and dust from which stars and planets are formed and materials that could be building blocks of life, scientists are trying to find answers to age-old questions of our cosmic origins.
• 2013: It discovered starburst galaxies earlier in the universe’s history than they were previously thought to have existed.
• ALMA provided detailed images of the protoplanetary disc surrounding HL Tauri and “transformed the previously accepted theories about the planetary formation”
• 2015: The telescope 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.
• Recently As part of the Event Horizon Telescope project, a large telescope array consisting of a global network of radio telescopes, it provided the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. The image was unveiled by scientists in May 2022.