Halfway mark for NOEMA

September 20, 2018

Wit a ceremony on Wednesday, the Max Planck Society (MPG) and the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM) celebrated the successful completion of the first construction phase of the NOEMA project. The facility is now on its way to become the most powerful radio telescope for millimeter waves in the northern hemisphere.

Also at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), scientists use the observatory to study the gas-chemistry in protoplanetary disks, to observe star formation regions in our Milky Way and other nearby galaxies, and to analyse very distant high-redshift galaxies and quasars.

The completion of NOEMA phase 1, the first phase of the NOEMA project, was officially celebrated on Wednesday, September 19th. The Max Planck Society and its partner institute IRAM have completed the first, decisive step towards one of the most important German-French-Spanish initiatives in astronomy: upgrading the NOEMA observatory in the French Alps and developing the most powerful and most sensitive telescope at millimetre wavelengths in the northern hemisphere. Four years after the inauguration of the first new NOEMA antenna and the basic revision of the six already existing antennas on the mountain, ten 15-meter dishes currently constitute the observatory and have provided ground-breaking scientific results.

The complete press release can be found on the website of the MPI for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in German and English, as well as on the IRAM website.

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