New views of the cosmos
Though it won’t be completed until 2013, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a radio telescope observatory under construction in northern Chile, is already the most powerful and complex such facility ever built, and four astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) are among the first in line to use it. David Wilner and Sean M. Andrews, both lecturers on astronomy, and Harvard College Observatory associates Chunhua Qi and Arielle Moullet were selected from nearly 1,000 researchers worldwide who were competing to use the observatory. Their plans for their time on the telescope range from searching the dust cloud surrounding nearby stars for hints at how planets are formed, to conducting the most in-depth analysis yet of the volcanic activity on Jupiter’s innermost moon. “It’s very exciting,” Wilner said of being among the first to use ALMA. “I really can’t express how fortunate I feel to be able to use this...