Hosts of world astronomy

Dec 27, 2023 | News | 1 comment

Tags: ALMA

In order to be able to be with all our users at home, we hosted in Puerto Varas the conference “ALMA 10 years: Past, Present, Future”. A special occasion where we invited the entire astronomical community related to ALMA to talk about the latest results obtained by our observatory, and also to celebrate together a decade of operations.

175 people participated in person and another 135 online, totaling 305 people who were able to follow the more than 70 talks and presentations. The December 4-8 event was not the first of its kind. Five such meetings have been held since 2012, but this is the first time we’ve gone for a hybrid conference.

“A lot of people I haven’t seen since the pandemic, and there were also a lot of new faces. That really shows how ALMA continues to attract people given that we are doing such wonderful science. It was great to see so many people and so enthusiastic,” says John Carpenter, our Observatory Scientist.
In Puerto Varas, recent discoveries, technological developments and the progress of the WSU for ALMA 2030 were shared. For those who participated for the first time, like Cristian García, our Array Operator, it was surprising to see that “our work, and not only that of the astronomers and operators, but that of all the people at the observatory, has an influence in one way or another for ALMA to obtain these results”, he emphasizes.

“I was struck by how ALMA has contributed to science, to the point that physical theories have had to be discussed again, for example, with the protoplanetary disks”, adds Cristian.

Since several of our Japanese partners traveled across the world to participate in this event, we took advantage of the opportunity to hold a special seminar with them after Puerto Varas at SCO.
“We have a 12-hour time difference with Chile and the flight takes 40 hours to get here, so it’s not easy to know who is working with ALMA. So this is a good opportunity to say thank you to all the people at JAO,” says Toshiki Saito, assistant professor at NAOJ.

Seiji Fujimoto, NASA Hubble telescope astronomer fellow, was one of those who took advantage of his trip to Chile to join the special visit to see our antennas at AOS: “I enjoyed it very much. This was our first time at the ALMA site after 10 years since we started using their data, so it is a very special date”, he concluded.

(At the image, Seiji Fujimoto on the left and Toshiki Saito on the right)

Click on the photo to see images from the Conference, and if you have more share them to [email protected]
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1 Comment

  1. Martin Diaz

    Bravoooo!! Que emoción! Gracias por compartir estas fotos y hacer esta nota y asi saber un poco lo que fue este evento y lo que genera ALMA! Es un orgullo se parte de este maravilloso proyecto!!

    Reply

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