Over the past three years the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter Astronomy (CARMA) was formed from the merger of two telescope arrays supported by the Division of Astronomical Science's University Radio Observatories (URO) Program, these being Caltech?s Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) array of six 10.4-meter-diameter telescopes, and the Berkeley Illinois Maryland Association (BIMA) array of nine 6.1-meter-diameter telescopes. With commissioning at the new site now complete, CARMA will achieve resolutions as high as 0.2 arcseconds at a wavelength of 1mm and, due to its heterogeneous combination of telescope diameters, will provide excellent imaging over a wide range of angular scales. When new receivers are installed in 2009, CARMA's sensitivity in the 1 mm band will be an order of magnitude greater than that of the previous arrays. The new science enabled by CARMA covers a broad range of astronomical topics, including star formation and molecular clouds, studies of external galaxies, and the investigation of solar system objects. CARMA is a pathfinder for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and a pipeline for training experts in the field of millimeter interferometry to take full advantage of ALMA's capabilities for US astronomy.
The primary goal of this award is to conduct cutting-edge astrophysical research using the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA) for a broad range of science: from the formation of stars to the formation of galaxies and creation of structure in the early universe. The award supports the operations and maintenance of the CARMA, the development of new technical capabilities for the array, the astronomical observations conducted with the array and the data analysis and dissemination of the results. The array consists of a total of 23 antennas (eight 3.5-meter diameter antennas, nine 6.1-meter diameter antennas, and six 10.4-meter antennas) located on Cedar Flat near the Owens Valley Radio Observatory in California. The antennas work together as an interferometer to produce images of the astronomical sky at wavelengths of 10-mm, 3-mm, and 1.3-mm. CARMA is operated and managed by the California Institute of Technology, University of California Berkeley, University of Illinois, University of Chicago, and University of Maryland, with funds from the NSF and the member institutions. The primary product of CARMA is scientific data and images that enable the study of gas (molecular, atomic and ionized) and dust in a wide range of objects in the Universe. An excellent example of this is the first detection of a circumstellar disk (where planets form) around the youngest protostar. We use the motion of the gas in the disk to detect the mass of a young protostar for the first time. Even though the star is surrounded by 1 solar mass of gas and dust, it is 20% of a solar mass.
