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Mahesh

01/03/23 10:06 AM IST

ALMA telescope

In News
  • 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.
About new Upgrades
  • 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.
  • Today, ALMA’s correlators are among the world’s fastest supercomputers.
  • Over the next 10 years, the upgrade will double and eventually quadruple their overall observing speed.
  • 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.
About ALMA
  • ALMA is 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.
  • It also has extraordinary sensitivity, which allows it to detect even extremely faint radio signals.
  • As mentioned before, 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.
Location
  • 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.
Discovery
  • In 2013, ALMA discovered starburst galaxies that existed earlier in the universe's history than previously thought.
  • ALMA also provided detailed images of a protoplanetary disc around a young star, HL Tauri, in 2014, which challenged existing theories about planetary formation.
  • In 2015, the telescope helped scientists observe the Einstein ring phenomenon, where light from a galaxy or star passes by a massive object on its way to Earth.
Source- Indian Express

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