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Donnerstag, 07. Mai 2009 um 00:00 Uhr |
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The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an immense international telescope project under construction in northern Chile, reached a major milestone on April 30, when two ALMA antennae were linked together as an integrated system to observe an astronomical object for the first time.
Faint radio waves emitted by the planet Mars were collected by the two 12-meter diameter ALMA antennas, then processed by state-of-the-art electronics to turn the two antennas into a single, high-resolution telescope system, called an interferometer. Such pairs of antennas are the basic building blocks of imaging systems that enable radio telescopes to deliver pictures that approach or even exceed the resolving power of visible light telescopes.
In such a system, each antenna is combined electronically with every other antenna to form a multitude of antenna pairs. Each pair contributes unique information that is used to build a highly-detailed image of the astronomical object under observation. When completed in early in the next decade, ALMA's 66 antennae will provide over a thousand such antenna pairings, with distances between antennas exceeding ten miles. This will enable ALMA to see with a sharpness surpassing that of the best space telescopes. The successful Mars observation was conducted at an observing frequency of 104.2 GHz. Astronomers measured the distinctive varying fringes detected by the interferometer as the planet moved across the sky.
You can find Daniel Fischers Cosmic Mirror here. |