What is ALMA telescope, that will soon get a ‘new brain’?

Fully functional since 2013, the radio telescope was designed, planned and constructed by the US’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ALMA is a state-of-the-art telescope that studies celestial objects at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths — they can penetrate through dust clouds and help astronomers examine dim and distant galaxies and stars out there. As mentioned before, the telescope consists of 66 high-precision antennas, spread over a distance of up to 16 km. “For travelling from Japan, it takes 40 hours to get to the ALMA site in Chile including connection time. In spite of such a long distance, the selected site is still the ultimate observing site on Earth with ideal conditions for the ALMA telescope”, the telescope’s website said.