A powerful new array of radio telescopes is being deployed for the first time this week, as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile joins a global network of antennas poised to make some of the highest resolution images that astronomers have ever obtained. The improved level of detail is equivalent to being able to count the stitches on a baseball from 8,000 miles away.
– VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) now links radio telescopes spread across the globe into what is, in effect, a telescope the size of our planet
– extending the array to millimeter wavelengths achieved a further boost in resolving power.
The result is an order-of-magnitude increase in the sensitivity of the world’s millimeter VLBI networks.
EM Frequency
Here are the electromagnetic frequencies
gamma rays (over ~1 MeV)
hard X-rays (10-1000 keV)
soft X-rays (1-10 A)
EUV (~100 A)
UV…
