Latest National Astronomical Observatory of Japan Stories

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online A plan to build the world’s largest telescope moved one step closer to becoming a reality on Friday, as the Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) approved a plan to build the record-breaking instrument at the summit of Mauna Kea volcano. According to Audrey McAvoy of the Associated Press (AP), the ruling allows the US and Canadian universities behind the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project to begin negotiating a...

NEWTON, N.C., Oct. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Thirteen 12-meter antennas manufactured by General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies have been successfully installed at the 16,500-foot-high Chajnantor plateau in Chile, home to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) astronomical observatory. Located in the Andes mountains, the 115-ton, highly specialized antennas form part of an 11-mile-wide international astronomy project. When it is completed in 2013, scientists will use the...

[ Watch the Video ] Astronomers have opened up its doors to a new ground-base telescope that will help give scientists a peak at the places that have never been explored. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has released an image of a merging pair of galaxies as part of its grand opening. ALMA is the largest and most expensive radio observatory on Earth and was funded by several different space agencies. Radio observatories collect tiny waves given off by the...

  The ultimate in high altitude, high-tech catering has arrived in Chile to serve chilled "provisions" to the telescopes at the largest astronomical complex in the world, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Until now, servicing the state-of-the-art superconducting receivers inside an ALMA telescope has required hauling the entire 115-ton telescope from its observing site at 16,500 feet down to a support facility at 9,500 feet. The dangerous 40-mile roundtrip, atop...

First finding as part of new research collaborationAn international team of scientists that includes an astronomer from Princeton University has made the first direct observation of a planet-like object orbiting a star similar to the sun.The finding marks the first discovery made with the world's newest planet-hunting instrument on the Hawaii-based Subaru Telescope and is the first fruit of a novel research collaboration announced by the University in January.The object, known as GJ 758 B,...

A team of astronomers and engineers at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have made the first interferometric measurements of radio signals "” so-called "fringes" "” of an astronomical source from the observatory's 5000-meter "high site" of Chajnantor. This is an important technical step for ALMA, as it used a full suite of the production equipment, including two of the 12-meter diameter antennas, and sophisticated electronic systems for receiving and correlating the...

Astronomers have tracked down a gigantic, previously unknown assembly of galaxies located almost seven billion light-years away from us. The discovery, made possible by combining two of the most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world, is the first observation of such a prominent galaxy structure in the distant Universe, providing further insight into the cosmic web and how it formed."Matter is not distributed uniformly in the Universe," says Masayuki Tanaka from ESO, who led...

ALMA is on its way to developing observational capabilities with resonance 10 times that of the current state of the artAstronomers yesterday celebrated the formal acceptance of the first North American antenna by the Joint ALMA Observatory. ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, is a gathering armada of short-wavelength radio telescopes whose combined power will enable astronomers to probe with unprecedented sharpness phenomena and regions that are beyond the reach of...

High in the Atacama region in northern Chile, one of the world's most advanced telescopes has just passed a major milestone. The first of many state-of-the-art antennas has just been handed over to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) project. ALMA is under construction on the plateau of Chajnantor, at an altitude of 5000 m. The telescope is being built by a global partnership, including ESO as the European partner.ALMA will initially comprise 66 high precision antennas,...

The sun has been laying low for the past couple of years, producing no sunspots and giving a break to satellites.That's good news for people who scramble when space weather interferes with their technology, but it became a point of discussion for the scientists who attended an international solar conference at Montana State University. Approximately 100 scientists from Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and North America gathered June 1-6 to talk about "Solar Variability, Earth's...