Receiver Maintenance at ALMA Operations Support Facility
Photo・
The ALMA Operations Support Facility (at an altitude of 2900 meters in the Atacama Desert in Chile) is the local base of operations for ALMA. In the ALMA Operations Support Facility, they have a control room for the remote operating system to control the ALMA antennas located at the ALMA Array Operations Site at an altitude of 5,000 meters. They also have offices, lodgings for officials, laboratories to maintain receivers, and so on. This photo was taken in a laboratory. A blue cylindrical cooled vacuum tank housing the central receivers is about to be attached to the measuring instruments in order to reconfirm the performance of the ALMA receiver after maintenances.
Maintenance Work at ALMA Operations Support Facility
Many observation instruments that support the ALMA array operate at an altitude of 5000 meters. Maintenance and troubleshooting are sometimes performed at the 5000 meter altitude. But when special equipment is required, or major work is needed, we move them down to the ALMA Operations Support Facility. The instrument in this photo is one of those special instruments. The white plate-shaped part on which the blue vacuum refrigerating machine is about to be mounted is called a tilt table. It tilts greatly. A radio transmitter is attached to the top of it. It can measure the radio receiver performance with the whole receiver inclined, just as it observes astronomical objects mounted on the actual antenna. How the instrument tests the receiver is shown in the ALMA receiver development movie.
Text by: Masaaki Hiramatsu (NAOJ Chile Observatory)
Translation by: Hiroko Tsuzuki and Ramsey Lundock (Public Relations Center, NAOJ)
Image Data
| Date | December 7, 2013 |
|---|---|
| Photographer | Masaaki Hiramatsu |
| Credit | National Astronomical Observatory of Japan |
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