About Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Telescope:
- It is a state-of-the-art radio-telescope, located in the Atacama Desert in Chile that studies celestial objects at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths.
- It has been fully functional since 2013.
- It was designed, planned and constructed by the US’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
- Properties of ALMA Telescope:
- It also has extraordinary sensitivity, which allows it to detect even extremely faint radio signals.
- It consists of 66 high-precision antennas, spread over a distance of up to 16 km in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile.
- These antennas can be moved closer together or farther apart for different perspectives – like the zoom lens of a camera.
- Major Discoveries of ALMA Telescope:
- In 2013 it discovered starburst galaxies earlier in the universe’s history than they were previously thought to have existed.
- It provided detailed images of the protoplanetary disc surrounding HL Tauri — a very young T Tauri star in the constellation Taurus, approximately 450 light years from Earth.
- It helped scientists observe a phenomenon known as the Einstein ring.
- Einstein ring occurs when light from a galaxy or star passes by a massive object en route to the Earth, in extraordinary detail.
