OREANDA-NEWS. Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced that 16 Atacama Compact Array (ACA) antennas delivered by the company under contract with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) were feted in an inauguration ceremony at the Operations Support Facility of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Observatory in Chile.

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera and numerous other guests celebrated the inauguration of the observatory, where the company-built ACA antennas, also known as "IZAYOI," comprising four 12-meter and 12 seven-meter antennas, will be used in astronomical observations as part of the 66 large radio telescopes being built in Chile's Atacama Desert.

The antennas, which are located at an altitude of 5,000 meters in the Atacama Desert of the Andes Mountains, incorporate innovative correction technologies and bespoke structural designs to minimize deformation due to heat or wind, and are driven with a direct-drive method using linear motors, resulting in the achievement of 25?m mirror accuracy and 0.6 arc-second pointing accuracy despite the harsh conditions of their operating environment.

Since the launch of the first-phase observations in September 2011, the ALMA project already has discovered a simple sugar molecule in a planet-forming region, measured the chemical composition of a very distant galaxy and found planet-forming gas streams that feed gas-guzzling giant planets. Going forward, Mitsubishi Electric will continue contributing to the project through training to local engineers and support in equipment maintenance.

ALMA is an international astronomical project involving the participation of Japan, the United States, Europe, Chile and other countries. Combining 66 telescopes using an interferometer array, the multiple antennas is equal to a massive radio telescope that would measure 18.5 kilometers in diameter, achieving a resolution equivalent to visualizing a small coin from a distance of 400 kilometers. The three major goals of the ALMA project are to investigate the birth of planets, the birth of galaxies and the evolution of matter in the universe.