Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association

Last updated
Berkeley Illinois Maryland Array
CARMA Panoramic cropped2.jpg
Eight of the nine BIMA antennas (center) as incorporated into the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (2009)
Alternative namesBerkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Location(s)United States OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Organization University of California, Berkeley
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
University of Maryland   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Wavelength 100 GHz (3.0 mm)
Decommissioned2005  OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Number of telescopes9  OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Diameter6.1 m (20 ft 0 in) OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Website bima.astro.umd.edu/bima/ OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

The Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association (BIMA) was a collaboration of the Universities of California, Illinois, and Maryland that built and operated the eponymously named BIMA radio telescope array. [1] Radio Astronomy Laboratory at UC Berkeley</ref> Originally (1986) the premier imaging instrument in the world at millimeter wavelengths, the array was located at the UCB Hat Creek Observatory. In early 2005 nine of its ten antennas were moved to the Inyo Mountains and combined with antennas from the Caltech Owens Valley Radio Observatory and eight telescopes operating at a wavelength of 3.5 millimeters from the University of Chicago Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Array (SZA), to form CARMA, the largest millimeter array in the world for radio astronomy at the time. [2] [3] CARMA was in turn decommissioned in 2015.

References

  1. "UC Berkeley passes management of Allen Telescope Array to SRI". UC Berkeley. April 13, 2012. Retrieved March 7, 2025. The original millimeter-wave dishes expanded in number until in 1987 they became the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Array (BIMA), jointly operated by UC Berkeley, the University of Illinois and the University of Maryland.
  2. "Out with the BIMA, in with the ATA". UC Berkeley. October 29, 2004. Retrieved March 7, 2025. The high-elevation Cedar Flat site is better for millimeter-wave astronomy than Hat Creek, Plambeck said, because there is less water vapor to interfere with radio observations. Conversely, Hat Creek is situated in a shallow valley in the southern Cascade range and thus has less radio interference, which could disrupt the sensitive measurements planned with the ATA
  3. "Leo Blitz (1945–2022)". Bulletin of the AAS. 55 (1). 2023. Retrieved March 5, 2025. The next step was to expand the number of galaxies studied, but BIMA wasn't sensitive enough...Enter the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA), a combination of six 10.4-meter telescopes (from Caltech), nine 6.1-meter (from BIMA), and eight 3.5-meter (from University of Chicago) telescopes.