APEX Radio Telescope

The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), is a powerful Radio Telescope, with the capacity to research how the Universe was formed.
This is the first prototipe radio telescope to be installed on the Llano de Chajnantor, 0 Km east San Pedro de Atacama, North of Chile, and is the kickoff of the ALMA Project. (See map below).

Placed at an altitude of 5,105 meters (16,748 feets aprox.), the site was selected for his tiny atmosphere, and clear skies.

The APEX inauguration was on september 27th.

This is a modified ALMA prototype antenna as a single dish on the high altitude site of Llano Chajnantor.

The APEX will allow the study of warm and cold dust in starforming regions both in our own Milky Way and in distant galaxies in the young universe. The capacity of the radio telescope to search at high frequency spectral lines enables the exploration of the structures and chemistry of planetary atmospheres, dying stars, molecular clouds as well as inner regions of starburst galaxies, also the astrophysics could adress issues about the structure of the Universe down to the physics and chemistry of comets (more on APEX site).

The ALMA Project

ALMA (in spanish alma means soul), is the The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), an international collaboration between Europe, Japan and the North America to build a synthesis radio telescope that will operate at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths, situated on the North of Chile, at an altitude of 5.105 meters.

When completed (in 2011), ALMA will be the largest and most capable imaging array of telescopes in the world.

See technical specifications at ALMA web site.

Here is a picture of the APEX Radio Telescope:
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