Big! World's highest astronomical observatory is finally open and sits atop Chile's Andes Mountains

Good news for all astronomy enthusiasts! The world’s highest astronomical observatory at 5,640 metres (18,500 feet) above sea level is now open in the Atacama Desert. Any stargazer who has camped on a mountainside is aware of how much clearer the stars look from there, now imagine observing the starry world from the highest point in the world.

The University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory (TAO) is now built and fully operational, sitting on the summit of a mountain in the Atacama Desert. It is now the world’s highest location with a ground-based telescope that will give astronomers an infrared view of the universe.

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But constructing this observatory at a peak of 5,640 metres was not an easy task, and took 26 years to come out in its present form. The TAO was first conceptualised 26 years ago to study the evolution of galaxies and exoplanets.

Location of the observatory

Speaking of the exact location, TAO is located on the summit of Atacama’s Cerro Chajnantor mountain that also has a significant meaning. Cerro Chajnantor means “place of departure” in the now-extinct Kunza language of the indigenous Likan Antai community.

The region’s high altitude, sparse atmosphere and perennially arid climate are hostile to humans but is an excellent spot for infrared telescopes like TAO. The observational accuracies of infrared telescopes depend a lot on low moisture levels, which render Earth’s atmosphere transparent in infrared wavelengths.

Construction was a political challenge

Constructing the telescope on the summit of Mt. Chajnantor "was an incredible challenge, not just technically, but politically too," Yuzuru Yoshii, a professor at the University of Tokyo in Japan who spearheaded TAO since 1998, said in a statement.

"I have liaised with Indigenous peoples to ensure their rights and views are considered, the Chilean government to secure permission, local universities for technical collaboration, and even the Chilean Health Ministry to make sure people can work at that altitude in a safe manner."

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"Thanks to all involved, research I've only ever dreamed about can soon become a reality, and I couldn't be happier," he added.

Specifications

The TAO’s telescope is 6.5 metres in length and consists of two science instruments designed to observe the universe in infrared, which is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than visible light but shorter than microwaves.

One of the instruments, SWIMS, will image galaxies from the very early universe to understand how they coalesced out of pristine dust and gas, a process whose specifics remain murky despite decades of research.

The second, named MIMIZUKU, will aid the overarching science goal by studying primordial disks of dust within which stars and galaxies are known to form, according to the mission plan.

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"The better astronomical observations of the real thing can be, the more accurately we can reproduce what we see with our experiments on Earth," Riko Senoo, a graduate student at the University of Tokyo and a TAO researcher, said in the statement.

The observatory has been discussed for the past 26 years, but the on-site work began only in 2006 when the first access road to Mt. Chajnantor's summit was paved and a weather monitor was installed soon after.

(With inputs from agencies)