Meddelelse

Republic of Korea Joins ALMA

20. august 2014

On 17 August 2014, the Japanese National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) signed an agreement concerning the operation and development of ALMA. With this agreement, the Republic of Korea officially joined in the East Asia ALMA consortium whose current members are Japan and Taiwan.

Japan and Korea have already promoted active collaboration in the field of astronomy. In 2001, the two countries made a successful very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observation for the first time by linking the 45-metre radio telescope of the Nobeyama Radio Observatory (NRO) of the National Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and the 14-metre radio telescope of the Taeduk Radio Astronomy Observatory of Korea. The following year, NAOJ and KASI officially signed an agreement to further strengthen the collaboration. And a decade later, in March 2012, NAOJ and KASI signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) concerning collaboration on the ALMA project.

This agreement enables Korea’s participation in the ALMA project as well as their contribution to the operation of ALMA and the development of new instruments. It is expected that this agreement will enhance the cooperation of Korea with the other ALMA partners in astronomy and greatly promote the diversity and innovativeness of East Asian astronomical research.

Kontakter

Jongsoo Kim
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute
Korea
Tel: +82-42-865-3218
Email: jskim@kasi.re.kr

Masaaki Hiramatsu
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
Japan
Tel: +81 422 34 3630
Email: hiramatsu.masaaki@nao.ac.jp

Richard Hook
ESO, Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 1537 3591
Email: rhook@eso.org