A new telescope described as the world's highest astronomy site is officially open for business.
Tokyo University's Atacama Observatory, or TAO, first conceived 26 years ago to study the evolution of galaxies and exoplanets, is located on the top of a tall mountain in the Chilean Andes 5,640 meters (18,500 feet) above sea level. Even exceeds the height of the facility Atacama Large Millimeter ArrayWhich is located at an altitude of 5,050 meters (16,570 feet).
TAO is located atop Mount Cerro Chajnantor in the Atacama, whose name means “place of departure” in the now-extinct Kunza language of the indigenous Likan Antai community. The region's high altitude, sparse atmosphere and perpetually dry climate are deadly to humans, but it represents an excellent setting for infrared telescopes like TAO where observing accuracy depends on low humidity levels, which makes Earth's atmosphere transparent at infrared wavelengths.
Related: Watch the Milky Way shine using two telescopes in Chile's Atacama Desert in this stunning image
Yuzuru Yoshi, a professor at the University of Tokyo in Japan who has led TAO since 1998, said in an article that building the telescope on Mount Chajnantor “was an incredible challenge, not only technically, but politically as well.” statement. “I have liaised with indigenous people to ensure that their rights and opinions are taken into account, with the Chilean government to obtain permission, with local universities for technical cooperation, and even the Chilean Ministry of Health to ensure that people can work at this altitude in a safe way.”
“Thanks to everyone involved, the research I've been dreaming about could soon become a reality, and I couldn't be happier,” he added.
The 6.5-meter TAO telescope consists of two scientific instruments designed to observe the universe in infrared light, which is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than visible light but shorter than microwaves.
One of the tools called SwimmingIt will image galaxies from the beginning of the universe to understand how they coalesced from the original dust and gas, a process whose details remain mysterious despite decades of research.
The second, called MIMIZUKU, will help achieve the overall scientific goal by studying the primordial dust disks in which stars and galaxies are known to form, according to the researchers. Mission plan.
“The better the astronomical observations are of the real thing, the more accurately we will be able to reproduce what we see through our experiments on Earth,” Reiko Seno, a graduate student at the University of Tokyo and a TAO researcher, said in the statement. “I hope that the next generation of astronomers will use TAU and other ground-based and space-based telescopes to make unexpected discoveries that challenge our current understanding and explain the inexplicable,” added Masahiro Konishi, a research associate at the University of Tokyo.
Before building the newly opened telescope, Yoshi and his colleagues also assembled and operated a 1-meter telescope on the mountaintop in 2009. The small telescope, called miniTAO, imaged the center of the Milky Way, our home galaxy. Two years later, miniTAO received an award Guinness World Record The highest astronomical observatory on Earth.
Although the observatory has been under discussion for the past 26 years, work on the site only began in 2006 when First access road The summit of Mount Chajnantur was paved and a weather monitor was installed soon after.
Before the telescope was built, astronomers and members of the local community, which considers Mount Chajnantur sacred, cleared the construction site and held a “groundbreaking ceremony for the purpose of praising God's forgiveness, the integrity of the construction, and the success of the telescope.” The project,” according to A Previous press release By the project team.
