On August 17, 2014, the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) signed an agreement concerning the operations and development of ALMA. With this agreement, Korea officially joined in the East Asia ALMA consortium, whose current members are Japan and Taiwan.
Japan and Korea have promoted active collaboration in the field of astronomy. In 2001, the two countries made a successful VLBI observation for the first time by linking the 45-meter radio telescope of the Nobeyama Radio Observatory (NRO) of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and the 14-meter radio telescope of the Taeduk Radio Astronomy Observatory of Korea. The following year, NAOJ and KASI officially signed an agreement to further strengthen the collaboration. And a decade later, in March 2012, NAOJ and KASI signed a Memorandum of Understanding concerning the collaboration of ALMA.
This agreement enables Korea’s participation into the ALMA project as well as their contribution to the operations of ALMA and development of new instruments. It is expected that this agreement will enhance the cooperation of two countries in astronomy and greatly promote the diversity and innovativeness of East Asian astronomical researches.
Contacts:
Masaaki Hiramatsu
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
Tel: +81-422-34-3630
Email: hiramatsu.masaaki@nao.ac.jp
Dr. Jongsoo Kim
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute Korea
Tel : +82-42-865-3218
Email : jskim@kasi.re.kr
