ALMA Adventure--Complete Interviews With Planetary Radio Guests

Posted By Mat Kaplan

2013/03/26 12:33 CDT

Topics: podcasts and videos, interview, Planetary Radio, extrasolar planets, stars and galaxies, radio telescopes, astronomy, solar system formation, spectroscopy

It has only been a week-and-a-half since I returned from Chile, but my wonderful time spent at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) already seems like it happened a month ago. Listening to these conversations with four of the terrific people featured on parts one and two of our Planetary Radio coverage has helped put me back in that special place.

There is so much more to these interviews than I was able to include in the shows. I hope you'll find them as enjoyable as I did. You may also want to check out my photo album and the six minute video I shot at ALMA.

Denis Barkats, ALMA System Astronomer

Stuartt Corder, ALMA Commissioning and Science Verification Project Scientist

Alison Peck, National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Ewine van Dishoeck, University of Leiden Astrochemist

President Sebastian Pinera of Chile--English Translation of ALMA Inauguration Speech

Mat Kaplan

ALMA Radio Telescope Dish

Comments:

Francesco Manca: 04/09/2013 12:35 CDT

This is Francesco Manca from Italy, I'm the responsible for the ALMA' encoders (I'm also involved in clse approaches computations of asteroids with the Earth) installed on the european antennas and I visited the OSF in Chile last year to recovery an antenna damaged. Yes the location is hard but very very beatiful . The scientific works is going very well and i think that when all antennas will be completed we aspect to understand much more about celestial object, water in the univers and so on. ALMA is a goal for all of us. Regards, Francesco http://www.brera.mi.astro.it/sormano http://www.heidenhain.it

Al: 04/10/2013 03:23 CDT

Fantastic! But when will all the antennas be installed and how many will there be in total?

Francesco Manca: 04/13/2013 06:15 CDT

...now all antennas from USA NRAO and antennas from Japan are ready and most of them are working at 5000 mt as the europeans antennas but some ESO' antennas needs to be completed (these european antennas have a very good performance then the others). In any case until the current year all antennas will work together and I believe that the astronomy will be even more fascinating with more discoveries . Cheers, Francesco

Francesco Manca: 04/13/2013 07:17 CDT

Sorry, at the moment there are 50 antennas (25 NRAO + 25 ESO) and an option for more antennas and japanese antennas more smaller

Robert Michael: 04/16/2013 05:37 CDT

Two years ago, I climbed 18,385' Cerro Toco to the south of ALMA (beginning the climb fairly close to the Atacama Cosmological Telescope). I looked down on AMA under construction in the distance -- so I feel a personal connection to this wonderful instrument.

ram: 04/24/2013 02:13 CDT

I have a question Will charecterstics of infra red light emissions from distant galaxies differ if they traveled billions of light years versus just millions of years that the same light happened to go through a fictional wormhole?