Largest Telescope Built to See Cosmic Dawn

It’s already the largest telescope in the world but by the end of 2013 the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Telescope will be able to see dust that was formed 13 billion years ago. Comprised of 20 high-powered antennas the project will add another 46 over the next two years.

Sitting 16,000 feet above sea level, high on a plateau in the Andes Mountains of Chile, the array will have the capability to witness the formation of stars and galaxies toward the beginning of the universe. This telescope will specialize in mapping gas and dust in the Milky Way and other galaxies, studying stars formation, analyzing gas from an erupting volcano on Jupiter’s moon, Io and studying the origin of the solar wind.

When the telescope array is completed and working at full capacity astronomers will be able to glimpse the Cosmic Dawn, a period of time when galaxies began to form out of the debris of massive stars which died explosively shortly after the beginning of the Universe.

Dr Diego Garcia, one of the operations astronomers at ALMA says that a “new golden age of astronomy” began when the scientists switched on the new array on September 30.

ALMA View of Antennae Galaxies

ALMA and Hubble Composite View of Antennae Galaxies

Hubble Telescope View of Antennae Galaxies

ALMA’s First Image

Dr. Alison Peck, a radio astronomer and ALMA Deputy Project Scientist during construction and testing says the team chose the Antennae Galaxies for ALMA’s first image not just because of the name but “because it is in the process of undergoing the type of spectacular, violent merger that many galaxies may have undergone since their formation, but that we can rarely catch in action.”

The Antennae Galaxies are two spiral galaxies that are in the process of crashing into one another. They are the youngest and nearest colliding galaxy pair ever found.

Dr. Brad Whitmore of the Space Telescope Science Institute says, “The collision of these two galaxies has turned them into an impressive star-making factory. With Hubble, we’ve seen the formation of thousands of massive super star clusters, each with thousands or even millions of young stars in them.”

He says with with ALMA, astronomers will focus on the heart of the collision. They will be able to then study the formation of the Antennae’s “most impressive fireworks and look into the cores of the giant molecular clouds where the star clusters are born.”

The first image from ALMA is vastly different from the pictures from the Hubble Telescope and for good reason. Hubble is in space while ALMA is a ground-based array. ALMA also detects wavelengths about a thousand times longer than those of visible light. The longer wavelengths allow for the study of cold objects like the clouds of dust and gas from which planets and stars form, as well as very distant objects in the early universe.

The ALMA project began in 2003 and as more antennas have been added astronomers have been able to see further back in time by looking deeper into space with ever more clarity.

Dr. Garcia tells BBC News, “We are going to be able to see the beginning of the Universe, how the first galaxies were formed. We are going to learn so much more about how the Universe works.”

One of the projects on ALMA’s docket is the study of AU Microscopii, a young star about one percent the age of the sun with a ring of matter around it that may be in the process of coalescing into planets.