The world's largest radio telescope built and fully operational

Chile has finally completed the largest (and, concurrently, the most expensive) radio telescope in the world. He called ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array). Spent on project 1, 5 billion dollars and a few months time. Last antenna delivered on June 13.

Radio telescope itself is not monolithic, that is, it's not one huge "plate". The system consists of 66 elements, antennas, which are located on the plateau of Chajnantor in the Atacama Desert, Chile. By the way, quite a high plateau - 5000 meters above sea level, so that the place is chosen very successful.

project, as already mentioned, is very expensive, so that it was implemented by the several organizations from different regions, including Europe, North America and East Asia. At the beginning of ALMA implemented by the European Southern Observatory and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and after a while and joined National Research Council, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Academia Sinica (ASIAA) and the Republic of Chile.



Not all antennas constituting a system of equal size. 54 - diameter "plates" 12 m and 12 - with a diameter of 7 meters. ALMA perceives emission spectrum with a wavelength of a millimeter or less. Earlier radio telescopes are not tracked (with rare exceptions) this range, but now scientists have a new, powerful tool that can, in the words of one of the participants of the project "open a window on the universe."



Signal from antennas processed detachment Chinese supercomputer performance in 17 quadrillion operations per second.

Speaking about the project, its aims and objectives have a film (in English):



Via spacedaily

Source: habrahabr.ru/post/228019/