Tokyo

International array: Japanese input would make ALMA observatory ‘truly global’. Credit: ESO

Japan is planning to become the third partner of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), an international project currently led by US and European astronomers to build a large millimetre-wave observatory at a mountain site 5,000 metres high in Chile's Atacama Desert.

The collaboration would be based on a joint framework discussed during a meeting in Washington last week, at which ALMA partners and Japanese astronomers explored scientific aspects of the project.

Riccardo Giacconni, the president of Associated Universities Inc., which operates the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) — responsible on behalf of the National Science Foundation for the US end of ALMA — says that Japan's involvement would create “the world's first truly global astronomical collaboration”.

At a meeting in Tokyo two weeks ago, the three partners discussed scientific and technological aspects of the planned collaboration and agreed that merging ALMA with Japan's planned Large Millimetre and Submillimetre Array (LMSA) would lead to a better, more sophisticated facility.

An agreement was signed in Washington in June by US and European representatives to continue collaboration on the first phase of the telescope, which will image the Universe at millimetre wavelengths, between the radio and infrared spectral regions. It is hoped that full approval for the project will be obtained by 2001, with limited operations starting in 2005, and that the array will be fully operational by 2009.

Keiichi Kodaira, director-general of Japan's National Astronomical Observatory (NAO), which oversees LMSA, argues that Japan's involvement will bring substantial benefits to the project. “Since LMSA is already in the advanced stages of its design and development phase, there is much that Japan could contribute to the development of ALMA,” says Kodaira.

But he says that Japan would not be able to join ALMA as an official partner until it can secure the necessary funding from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture (Monbusho), which oversees NAO.

“One of the problems is the fact that we have a very different funding system from that of US and European research institutes,” says Kodaira. “Since the budget request for next year has already closed, we hope to secure relevant funding after the merger of Monbusho and the Science and Technology Agency (STA) in 2001.”

Until then, LMSA and ALMA are expected lead a separate existence, although the three sides have agreed on Japan's early involvement in the project at a scientific and technological level. Negotiations are currently taking place to add Canada to the US team, and Spain to Europe's participation.

Kodaira says that Japan will participate in the design and development phase of ALMA, including the investigation of the site.

Last week's meeting included discussions on the design differences between LMSA, which was planning to build 50 ten-metre antenna dishes, and ALMA, which plans to build 64 telescopes with 12-metre antennas. The purpose of the meeting was “to plan how to maximize ALMA's scientific potential”, says Paul Vanden Bout, director of NRAO.

ALMA, whose members also include the European Southern Observatory, France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the United Kingdom Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, is to study the structure of the early universe, the formation of the stars and the evolution of galaxies.

Kodaira hopes that ALMA will change the general perception in Japan that astronomy has no practical applications. He says that research into millimetre-wave interferometry could lead to new technologies in telecommunications, information technology and semiconductors, all priority areas in next year's budget.