ALMA, now under construction at an elevation of 16,500 feet in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, will provide astronomers with the world's most advanced tool for exploring the universe at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths.March 8, 2007
The Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international telescope project, reached a major milestone on March 2, when two ALMA prototype antennae were first linked together as an integrated system to observe an astronomical object.
Faint radio waves emitted by the planet Saturn were collected by the two ALMA antennae, then processed by new, state-of-the-art electronics to turn the two antennae 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.
