ALMA Gets Adjusted

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ALMA Gets Adjusted

Engineers adjusting an ALMA antenna's surface panels

Each panel on an ALMA antenna’s 12-meter dish must be carefully hand-adjusted to its neighbors to create a surface that is a perfect parabola, nearly a mirror finish. The wavelengths of radio light that ALMA collects are so tiny that even a hair’s difference in the parabola shape will scatter away the signals.

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

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ALMA Gets Adjusted

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