Sunday, March 9, 2014

ALMA RADIO TELESCOPES.

Learned about this on the I saw it on the TV show 60 MINUTES,   Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) , which is a collection of radio telescopes atop a mountain 16,000 feet (5,000 m) above sea level in Chile.

The site, space.com supplied a code which explains what this is all about.




Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration




ALMA Image Release: ALMA turns its eyes to Centaurus A




A NEW IMAGE of the center of the distinctive galaxy Centaurus A, made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), shows how the new telescope, which is still under construction, allows astronomers to see with unprecedented quality through the opaque dust lanes that obscure the galaxy's center.
Centaurus A is a massive elliptical radio galaxy (a galaxy that emits strong radio waves) and is the most prominent, as well as the nearest, radio galaxy in the sky. Its very luminous center hosts a supermassive black hole with a mass of about 100 million times that of the Sun.
As seen in visible light, a dark dusty band obscures the galaxy's center. This dust lane harbors large amounts of gas, dust and young stars. These features, together with the strong radio emission, indicate that Centaurus A is the result of a collision between a giant elliptical galaxy and a smaller spiral galaxy.

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