The Atacama Large Millimetre/Sub-millimetre Array (Alma) went operational in the Chilean Andes. It is now the world’s most expensive and sophisticated observatory and once completed (in 2013) will have the capability to find a new galaxy every three minutes!!
A composite of Alma and Hubble observations of the Antennae galaxies. The blue colours represent the best-quality optical image taken of this region of space so far – by Hubble. The red, pink and yellow show previously unseen wavelengths of light emanating from the vast carbon monoxide clouds that float in and between the galaxies, imaged by Alma for the first time. The clouds contain gases with a total mass several billion times that of our sun.
From The Guardian, where you can see more pictures:
"When a star forms, it forms in these cold, dusty gas clouds," said John Richer of the University of Cambridge and a project scientist for Alma. "The moment it's formed it's shrouded in this dusty material, out of which only half of the light from a typical star escapes. Many other stars are formed in very dense clouds and their light is completely absorbed by the dust in these clouds."
These soot-like clouds of dust, which are also the birthplace of planets like the Earth, obscure stars from modern optical and infrared equipment, such as the Hubble Space Telescope. While the dust hides the stars, however, it also gets heated by the starlight to a few degrees above absolute zero (-273C). The dust then emits radiation of its own at sub-millimetre wavelengths, which can be detected on Earth by Alma.
Sub-millimetre light waves are similar to the radiation used by microwave ovens and 1,000 times longer than the light we see with our eyes. Detecting these means that astronomers will be been able to build a more complete picture of the universe. "If you combine the optical images with the [Alma] images you reveal all the star-forming activity, you're not missing half of the picture," says Richer.
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