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CARMA in the cosmos
Caltech, partner unveil combination observatory
PASADENA - East of the Sierra Nevadas, high in the Inyo Mountains, a grand new science instrument was dedicated Friday. The Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy, a $15 million combination of two millimeter-wave observatories, will allow astronomers to observe the universe with unprecedented clarity. CARMA merges six dish telescopes from Caltech's Owens Valley Radio Observatory with 10 from Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association, previously located at Hat Creek in Northern California. "One of the things that's really important about the new array is that it brings together four universities that really pioneered this technique," said CARMA's director, Anneila Sargent. For many years, she said, the two observatories had been competitors, and had pushed each other to new heights. Recently, though, "we had realized that what had been done with each of our arrays was reaching its limit." In order to create the desired images using the millimeter-wave signals received by only one telescope, it would need to be the size of a football field, Sargent said. "You can't have that, but you can create the effect of a huge telescope using a technology of aperture synthesis," she said. Aperture synthesis merges the data received by numerous smaller dishes. Combined, CARMA's 15 telescopes - now updated with new instruments and programs that can quickly blend the data they each receive into one image - will be better able to observe the birth of stars and planets and to probe the origins of life and the universe. Additionally, said CARMA project manager Doug Bock, "moving to the high site gets us above more atmosphere and gets us clearer images." Cedar Flat is at 7,300 feet, twice as high as the telescopes' previous locations, Sargent said. The high elevation also results in less water vapor, which can distort the millimeter-wave signals. Besides providing bigger, more detailed pictures of space, the new array is "really a hands-on instrument where students and postdocs can do innovative and cutting edge science," Sargent said, and will train a cadre of new astronomers. It will also provide support for the even more powerful Atacama Large Millimeter Array when construction is completed in 2012 or 2013. That array, located in the Atacama desert in Chile at an altitude of more than 16,000 feet, will have more than 50 dishes. (626) 578-6300, Ext. 4451 |
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