The United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre

ALMA The Atacama Large Millimetre Array

ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimetre Array, will be the largest and most sensitive telescope in the world at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths (10mm-350micron). It is what is known as an ‘aperture synthesis’ telescope and will consist of 64 antennas, each 12 metres in diameter. It will be built on the plains at Chajnantor, at 5000m above sea level in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

ALMA will allow the study of galaxy, star and planetary system formation in unprecedented detail. With baselines between the antennas of up to 10km it will be possible to achieve 10 milli-arcsecond resolution, 10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.

ALMA will begin operation with a small number of antennas in 2007, and reach its full potential with the completion of all 64 antennas in 2012.

ALMA is being built by a large international consortium including the USA and Canada (led by the National Radio Astronomical Observatory) and 10 European countries (led by the European Southern Observatory). Japan is considering joining the consortium. The UK is participating in a number of areas in this challenging and complex project.

The UK ATC is leading the development of the ALMA Observing Tool, a collection of software which will form the astronomer's primary interface to observing with ALMA. This development, which is being done in collaboration with a team from ESO, will provide an easy to use tool that will allow observers not experienced in the complex field of submillimetre aperture synthesis observing to create observing programmes to meet their science goals. It is also expected that astronomers already familiar with aperture synthesis techniques will find the tool of value to create their programmes quickly and simply.

More information on ALMA is available at the following sites, or by contacting Alan Bridger.

US ALMA
ESO ALMA
UK ALMA