[Alma_na] From Darrel Emerson

[Janet Bauer]

For information:

CARMA Groundbreaking
--------------------

      CARMA had its Groundbreaking ceremony at Cedar Flat, in the Inyo
Mountains near Bishop last weekend (March 27). As everyone probably
knows, this is the "Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave
Astronomy," a joint venture of CalTech, the Univ. of California at
Berkeley, the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign, and the Univ. of
Maryland.  Developing the CARMA site will involve moving the six
10-meter telescopes from OVRO, together with nine 6-meter antennas from
the BIMA array.  The new CARMA site is at an altitude of 7300 ft, almost
twice as high as the present OVRO and BIMA locations, with
correspondingly less water vapor and better atmospheric transparency.
[For reference, the ALMA site is at ~16500 ft.]  The CARMA site is also
relatively close to the existing OVRO site, and access is good; for the
ceremony, we were transported in regular buses from OVRO to the site.
It's a relatively flat area, easily accommodating the ~2km max baselines
planned for the array.
      The plan is for the separate BIMA and OVRO arrays to cease
operation in June 2004, with their antennas then to be moved to the new
site and the combined array becoming operational in 2005.

      Photos of the event can be seen at:

      http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~kartik/groundbreaking/

with more information at:

      http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/04/0325carma.html
      http://www.spaceref.com/calendar/calendar.html?pid=2749
      http://www.mmarray.org/intro.html .

There is a simulation of different CARMA configuations at:

      http://www.mmarray.org/images/sims/sims.html .

                                                            DTE.



Janet Bauer
ALMA Project Secretary
NRAO - ALMA North American Project Office
2496 Old Ivy Road, Suite 226
Charlottesville, VA 22903
 
434.296.0296      (phone)
434.296.0255      (fax)
jbauer at nrao.edu (E-mail)