Teamwork between gamma-ray and radio astronomers has produced a breakthrough in finding natural cosmic tools needed to make the first direct detections of the long-elusive gravitational waves predicted by Albert Einstein nearly a century ago.
ALMA Test Sharpens the Vision of New Observatory
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array has passed a key milestone crucial to producing the high-quality images that will be the trademark of this revolutionary new tool for astronomy.
Record-Breaking Precision Radio Astronomy
Astronomers will tie together the largest collection of the world’s radio telescopes ever assembled to work as a single observing tool in a project aimed at improving the precision of the reference frame scientists use to measure positions in the sky.
ALMA Telescope Reaches New Heights
The ALMA astronomical observatory took another step forward and upward, as one of its state-of-the-art antennas was carried for the first time to Chile’s 16,500-foot-high plateau of Chajnantor on the back of a giant, custom-built transporter.
Advance in Frontier Gravitational Physics
Scientists using a continent-wide array of radio telescopes have made an extremely precise measurement of the curvature of space caused by the Sun’s gravity, and their technique promises a major contribution to a frontier area of basic physics.
ALMA Telescope Makes Successful Antenna Link
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, an immense international telescope project under construction in northern Chile, reached a major milestone on April 30, when two ALMA antennas were linked together as an integrated system to observe an astronomical object for the first time.