Announcement

In Search of Our Cosmic Origins Photo Book Released

13 March 2013

The biggest astronomy project in the world, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), will very likely make rivers of ink run in science journals around the world very soon, but before that happens, it has been portrayed in detail in the beautiful photo book In Search of Our Cosmic Origins.

Produced especially for the ALMA inauguration, which is to be held today at an official ceremony at the ALMA site in the Chilean Andes, the photo book looks at the history of the project and the people who have made it possible. The images take the reader on a tour, from the first plans to create a big radio interferometer and the birth of the idea of a common international project, through the search for the perfect location, the technical and logistic challenges of ALMA’s construction, and, finally, to the successful completion of the project, marked by the first impressive science results — achieved even before the observatory was fully operational.

Edited by Masaaki Hiramatsu, education and Public Outreach Officer for the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan in Chile, the photo book includes 66 images, one for each of the 66 antennas that form the ALMA array, gathered from the archives of the ALMA partnership organisations [1].

Copies of the book will be presented to distinguished guests attending to the ALMA inauguration ceremony.

Notes

[1] The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), 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) and in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.

Links

• The ALMA photo book
• More info

Contacts

Lars Lindberg Christensen
ESO education and Public Outreach Department
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6761
Cell: +49 173 3872 621
Email: lars@eso.org