Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association

Last updated
Berkeley Illinois Maryland Array
CARMA Panoramic cropped2.jpg
Eight of the nine BIMA antennas (center) as now incorporated into the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy
Alternative namesBerkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Part of Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy
Hat Creek Radio Observatory   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Location(s)United States
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)
First light 1986  OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Decommissioned2005  OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Telescope style research institute
radio interferometer  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] 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. CARMA was in turn decommissioned in 2015.

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References

  1. [ permanent dead link ] Radio Astronomy Laboratory at UC Berkeley