ALMA director gives presentation to Science and Technology Committee of the Chamber of Deputies
11 July, 2014 / Read time: 2 minutes
Pierre Cox, director of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, ALMA, gave a presentation of more than one hour on the advances and achievements of the astronomical observatory to members of the Chamber of Deputies’ Science and Technology Committee.
Cox emphasized that ALMA’s contribution "is very important to Chile" because of the high level of sensitivity and precision of its observations, the ways in which ALMA complements other telescopes in the country, and also because Chile has "a very small community of astronomers and scientists who have been assigned a significant portion of observation time (10% of the total), and who can work with large quantities of data and new technologies."
Credit: Cristian Bueno, Chamber of Deputies of Chile
He added that ALMA provides funding each year to CONICYT for astronomy research and training, and also has a fund for Chile’s Region 2 to implement various social and development projects.
In regard to astronomy outreach and education, Cox told the Committee that "Chilean society is lucky to be able to understand what ALMA does through public conferences and talks given at schools" and highlighted the recent launch of ALMA’s web site for kids, ALMA Kids as well as a new Radio Astronomy Manual for teachers.
The committee members expressed great interest in learning about how ALMA functions and asked a variety of questions. At the end of his presentation, ALMA’s director invited the members of the Chamber of Deputies present to visit the observatory so he could answer their questions on site.
Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
More Information
ALMA, an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
Contact:
Valeria Foncea
Education and Public Outreach Officer
Joint ALMA Observatory
Santiago, Chile
Tel: +56 2 467 6258
Cell: +56 9 75871963
Email: [email protected]
