A mosaic of all the “interferometered” people and objects at the ALMA Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition stand…
.. nice bunch of people - I can spot myself in there a few times. If came along you might be able to spot yourself!
If not you should come down to the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition and you can see what you would look like through the eyes of the worlds most power radio telescope.
If you have then take a look at our twitpic feed… as you could have uploaded the result for the whole world to see just like my hand:
— Sam George
Venus shortly before it moved in front of the Sun (the famous Venus transit) last month on June 5th. At that stage Venus was not visible through optical telescopes because its dark side was turned towards us. ALMA detects millimeter and submillimeter waves which are given off by the hot atmosphere of Venus (and of course even more strongly by the hot surface of the Sun).
More on this on the ALMA press release.
A new window into the Universe has opened with the start of Early Science at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Watch the world’s most complex ground-based telescope in action and get a first look at its unique views of the Universe.
The ALMA antennas are designed and built to face very rough conditions. ALMA is located in one of the driest locations on the Earth but very occasionally snow can cover the site…
The Array Operations Site (AOS) is located at 5,000 meters altitude - a live feed is provided via a webcam.
Well you’ll be in luck! There are paper models for the 12m antennas available. The paper antenna is movable along the elevation and azimuth axes. If you are careful then you can end up having one just like that made by one of research students at the University of Cambridge, Djelal Osman:
Along with the ALMA antennas you will also find the antenna transporter. So you could build you own “operational” ALMA.
Links:
Paper 12m antenna -
http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/e/multimedia/papercraft/images/acamodel_e.pdf
Paper transporter -
http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/e/multimedia/papercraft/images/transportermodel_e.pdf
— Sam George
