The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array: Overview & status

Abstract

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is an international radio telescope under construction in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. ALMA will be situated on a high-altitude site at 5000 m elevation which provides excellent atmospheric transmission over the instrument wavelength range of 0.3 to 3 mm. ALMA will be comprised of two key observing components: an array of up to sixty-four 12-m diameter antennas arranged in a multiple configurations ranging in size from 0.15 to ~14 km, and a set of four 12-m and twelve 7-m antennas operating in closely-packed configurations ~50m in diameter (known as the Atacama Compact Array, or ACA), providing both interferometric and total-power astronomical information. High-sensitivity dual-polarization 8 GHz-bandwidth spectral-line and continuum measurements between all antennas will be available from two flexible digital correlators.