Northern Extended Millimeter Array, Radio interferometer on Plateau de Bure, France
The Northern Extended Millimeter Array, also known as NOEMA, is a radio interferometer located on the Plateau de Bure in the French Alps, at roughly 2550 meters above sea level. It consists of twelve movable dish antennas, each 15 meters across, mounted on rails so they can be repositioned into different configurations depending on what is being observed.
The observatory was founded in the 1980s by the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique and began operating with just a few antennas. The expansion to the current twelve-antenna setup stretched over several decades and was completed in 2022 with the installation of the last dish.
Researchers from several European countries work together at this observatory, and that international presence shapes the daily life of the site in visible ways. Signs, documents, and team meetings often happen in more than one language, giving the place a distinctly collaborative feel.
The site is accessible only by cable car or on foot along a mountain path, so planning ahead for the ascent is a good idea. The altitude and mountain weather can change fast, so warm layers are worth bringing even in summer.
Although each dish on its own captures only a limited slice of the sky, the signals from all twelve are combined to produce an image equivalent to that of a single dish as wide as the distance between the outermost antennas. This technique makes it possible to observe structures in the universe that would otherwise stay out of reach for any instrument of this physical size.
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