• Chile’s Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA), an international observatory that operates one of the world’s most powerful radio telescopes, is set to get software and hardware upgrades.

• The Board of the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) has approved multi-million dollar upgrades for the development of a second-generation correlator and a digital transmission system. 

• Central to the ALMA2030 upgrades, the Second Generation ALMA Correlator— the “brain” of the array— is a type of supercomputer that combines the individual signals from each antenna to create exquisite images of astronomical objects. 

• The new correlator will improve the current one’s already highly refined ability to process and combine data and increase the sensitivity of astronomical images and the flexibility of making them.

What is ALMA?

• High on the Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes, the European Southern Observatory (ESO), together with its international partners, is operating the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA). 

• It is a state-of-the-art telescope to study light from some of the coldest objects in the Universe. This light has wavelengths of around a millimetre, between infrared light and radio waves, and is therefore known as millimetre and sub-millimetre radiation. 

• ALMA comprises 66 high-precision antennas, spread over distances of up to 16 kilometres. 

• Its main 12-metre array has fifty antennas, each measuring 12 metres in diameter, which together act as a single telescope — an interferometer.

• The 66 ALMA antennas can be arranged in different configurations, where the maximum distance between antennas can vary from 150 metres to 16 kilometres, which gives ALMA a powerful variable “zoom”. 

• It is able to probe the Universe at millimetre and sub-millimetre wavelengths with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution. 

• ESO is an inter-governmental organisation with 16 Member States along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a strategic partner.

• ALMA is a partnership between ESO, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with Chile. 

• This global collaboration is the largest ground-based astronomical project in existence.

Why is ALMA located in Chile’s Atacama Desert?

• Chile's Atacama Desert is the driest non-polar desert on Earth stretching more than 1,000 km.

• Millimetre and sub-millimetre radiation opens a window into the enigmatic cold Universe, but the signals from space are heavily absorbed by water vapour in the Earth's atmosphere. 

• Telescopes for this kind of astronomy must be built on high, dry sites, such as the 5,000-m high plateau at Chajnantor, one of the highest astronomical observatory sites on Earth.

• The ALMA site, some 50 km east of San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile, is in one of the driest places on Earth. 

• Astronomers find unsurpassed conditions for observing, but they must operate a frontier observatory under very difficult conditions.

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