A radio telescope array being built in the highest, driest desert in the world has photographed two colliding galaxies for its first public test shots.
The new images reveal a flurry of star formation within thick clouds of gas and dust at the Antennae Galaxies’ impact zone, 45 million light-years away. Older star-forming regions appear as a faint orange in the image while the youngest — some 3 to 4 million years old — glow bright yellow.
The same murky material that leads to star birth also blocks visible wavelengths of light, but the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile’s high Atacama Desert sees radio wavelengths.
ALMA is the largest and most expensive ground-based astronomical project currently under construction (current cost estimate is US$1.3 billion.
Guess who is paying for it... the American taxpayer, through the scholarly and innocent sounding National Science Foundation - an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense…"
LOL!
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