The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), will be a single research instrument composed of up to 80 high-precision antennas, located on the Chajnantor plain of the Chilean Andes in the District of San Pedro de Atacama, 5000 m above sea level. ALMA will enable transformational research into the physics of the cold Universe, regions that are optically dark but shine brightly in the millimeter portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Providing astronomers a new window on celestial origins, ALMA will probe the first stars and galaxies, and directly image the formation of planets.

ALMA will operate at wavelengths of 0.3 to 9.6 millimeters, where the Earths atmosphere above a high, dry site is largely transparent, and will provide astronomers unprecedented sensitivity and resolution. The up to sixty-four antennas of the 12 m Array will have reconfigurable baselines ranging from 150 m to 18 km. Resolutions as fine as 0.005" will be achieved at the highest frequencies, a factor of ten better than the Hubble Space Telescope.

ALMA will be a complete astronomical imaging and spectroscopic instrument for the millimeter/submillimeter, providing scientists with capabilities and wavelength coverage that complement those of other research facilities of its era, such as the Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA), the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), the Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope (GSMT), and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of East Asia, Europe and North America in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan, in Europe by the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) and in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC). ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), on behalf of Europe by ESO and on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI).

This project has come a long way and includes:

• Up to sixty-four 12-meter antennas located at an elevation of 16,400 feet in Llano de Chajnantor, Chile
• Imaging instrument in all atmospheric windows between 10 mm and 350 microns
• Array configurations from approximately 150 meters to 10 km
• Spatial resolution of 10 milliarcseconds, 10 times better than the VLA and the Hubble Space Telescope
• Able to image sources arcminutes to degrees across at one arcsecond resolution
• Velocity resolution under 0.05 km/s
• Faster and more flexible imaging instrument than the VLA
• Largest and most sensitive instrument in the world at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths
• Point source detection sensitivity 20 times better than the VLA

A brochure advertising ALMA's science goals and expected capabilities is available via the following link: ALMA Brochure (PDF, 0.8MB)