A team of scientists conquered the peak to build a telescope
The vast expanses of the Universe will open up from new heights thanks to the commissioning of the Atacama Observatory of the University of Tokyo (TAO). This project, begun 26 years ago to study the evolution of galaxies and exoplanets, culminated with the opening of the world's highest telescope.
Located on the summit of Cerro Chajnantor in the Chilean Andes at an altitude of 5,640 meters above sea level, TAO has surpassed even the legendary Atacama Large Millimeter Array, located at an altitude of 5,050 meters. This achievement was the result of efforts and overcoming obstacles, both technical and political.
Yuzuru Yoshii, professor at the University of Tokyo and director of the TAO project since 1998, commented: «Building a telescope on the top of Mount Chajnantor was an incredible challenge, not only from a technical but also from a political point of view vision. I liaised with indigenous peoples to ensure their rights and views were taken into account, with the Chilean government to obtain permission, with local universities for technical cooperation, and even with the Chilean Ministry of Health to ensure that people could work safely at this height. .
The name of the mountain Cerro Chajnantor has special meaning for the local indigenous peoples. It translates as «place of departure», which gives symbolic meaning to this project, which opens up new horizons in space exploration.
The Atacama region's altitude, thin atmosphere, and persistently dry climate, while deadly to humans, create ideal conditions for infrared telescopes such as TAO. Low humidity levels make the Earth's atmosphere transparent in the infrared, which increases the accuracy of observations.
The
6.5-meter TAO telescope is equipped with two scientific instruments designed to observe the Universe in the infrared range. The first instrument, SWIMS, will image galaxies in the early Universe to better understand how they formed.
A second instrument, MIMIZUKU, will advance this scientific goal by studying primordial dust disks within which stars and galaxies are known to form.
«The better the astronomical observations, the more accurately we can reproduce what we see in our models on Earth», — said Riko Senoo, a graduate student at the University of Tokyo and TAO researcher.
Masahiro Konishi, a research fellow at the University of Tokyo, added: «I hope that the next generation of astronomers will use TAO and other ground-based and space-based telescopes to make unexpected discoveries that will challenge our current understanding and will explain the inexplicable».
Before building TAO, the project team assembled and tested the miniTAO meter telescope on a mountaintop in 2009. This small telescope imaged the center of the Milky Way and in 2011 entered the Guinness Book of Records as the highest astronomical observatory on Earth.
Although the observatory has been discussed for 26 years, work on it began only in 2006, when the first access road to the top of Mount Chakhnantor was paved and a weather monitor was installed shortly thereafter.