Public Astronomy Presentation

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Thursday, October 23rd, 2014
8:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Credit: ALMA (Malin)

As of September 30, 2014,  after over 25 years of planning, the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) project finished construction in northern Chile.  ALMA, consisting of 66 extremely precise, high-frequency radio antennas that can be electronically linked to form a single telescope, will now begin decades of probing the cold, dark corners of the universe, where answers to the origins of stars, planets, and galaxies can be found.  ALMA is an international partnership of over 20 nations, including Canada who provided some of the cutting edge receiver technology ALMA uses daily  ALMA has been designed for high sensitivity and can return images of unprecedented detail at wavelengths of light over 1000 times longer than the eye can perceive.   At these long wavelengths and high levels of detail, we can now easily probe for indications of forming planetary systems, i.e., flattened disks of dust and gas orbiting young stars.  Though ALMA is now complete, its modular nature has allowed scientists to use it for the past two years to collect early data of such disks.  I will describe some of these fascinating discoveries of disks made with ALMA, and how they have already improved dramatically our understand of how planets form.  

James Di Francesco is an astronomer at the National Research Council of Canada, in its Herzberg Programs of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Victoria.  He has been supporting Canada's role in the international ALMA project and presently serves as the Executive Secretary of the Canadian Astronomical Society.