The US and European partners in the Atacama Large Millimeter Array project have awarded contracts to US and Italian firms, respectively, for two prototype antennas.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory will close down its millimeter-wavelength telescope on Kitt Peak, Arizona, in July 2000, Director Paul Vanden Bout announced today.

A disk of water molecules orbiting a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy 60 million light-years away is reverberating in response to variations in the energy output from the galaxy’s powerful central engine close to the black hole.

Scientists have discovered the closest black hole yet, a mere 1,600 light years from Earth.

Astronomers have gained their first glimpse of the mysterious region near a black hole at the heart of a distant galaxy, where a powerful stream of subatomic particles spewing outward at nearly the speed of light is formed into a beam, or jet, that then goes nearly straight for thousands of light-years.

Two hundred astronomers from around the world will meet in Washington, DC on October 7 and 8 to discuss exciting new science to be done with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA).