World's largest telescope begins operation

Alma, the largest and most complex telescope ever built, began its mission to uncover the secrets of the early universe from a desert in Chile yesterday.

The Alma telescope is designed to observe events that occurred a few hundred million years after the formation of the universe. That is the period when the first stars began to shine. Alma will help humans understand why the universe has the appearance and structure it has today.

Dr Diego Garcia, one of the astronomers involved in the Alma telescope project, commented that it would help usher in a “golden age in astronomy”.

“We will be able to see the birth of the universe, how the first galaxies formed. Scientists will learn more about the workings of the universe,” he said.

The Alma telescope array is located on the top of the highest plateau
in Chile's Atacama Desert. Photo: popsci.com

Made up of a giant antenna array capable of picking up radio signals from space, the Alma telescope sits atop the highest plateau in Chile's Atacama Desert. It has been under construction since 2003.

With Alma’s help, astronomers will discover a new galaxy every three minutes – a rate no one has ever thought possible. With current telescopes, humans can only see half of the universe. Alma will help us explore the other half.

Optical telescopes, like the Hubble Space Telescope, can also observe stars. But what sets Alma apart is its ability to collect forms of light that the human eye cannot see. This allows it to detect the cold, dense clouds that make up stars.

The European Southern Observatory, one of the organizations that manages the Alma telescope, has also just released the first images it has recorded. These are images of the collision of two galaxies called Antennae.

The image was captured using 12 of Alma's 20 antennas. The sharpness and resolution of the images will increase significantly with the addition of the remaining antennas. Alma will have 66 antennas by 2013.

According to VnExpress