The flying observatory was stationed at Cologne Bonn Airport until 16 March 2021

March 17, 2021

SOFIA is a Boeing 747SP with a 2.7-m-diameter telescope on board, built for astronomical observations from the infrared to the submillimetre wavelength range. From 4 February to 16 March 2021, the aircraft was stationed at Cologne Bonn Airport. Typically, it embarks on its observation flights from its usual location in Palmdale/California. But SOFIA underwent maintenance for three months, carried out by Lufthansa in Hamburg. Since the coronavirus pandemic is currently making it impossible for German scientists to travel to California, SOFIA was used for an observation campaign in the night sky over Europe, conducted from Cologne Bonn Airport, before the aircraft’s return to California. This campaign has now been successfully completed.

The flying observatory is a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt – DLR). SOFIA’s flight altitude is more than 13 kilometres. This allows the aircraft to fly above most of the water vapour in the Earth’s atmosphere, which would block infrared light at lower altitudes, thus enabling scientists to observe a wavelength range that is not accessible from Earth. Onboard SOFIA is the high-resolution receiver for far-infrared spectroscopy GREAT (German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies), developed by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn and the Institute for Astrophysics at the University of Cologne with the participation of the DLR’s Institute for Optical Sensor Systems (Berlin).

Scientists use the GREAT instrument, a spectrally high-resolution imaging spectrometer, to create a kind of chemical fingerprint of vast regions of the sky with high spatial and spectral resolution. The GREAT team not only performs measurements for its own research projects, but also collects data for other scientists.

Central to the Cologne campaign were observations made as part of the SOFIA legacy programme FEEDBACK, led by Dr Nicola Schneider at the University of Cologne’s Institute for Astrophysics and Professor Alexander Tielens at the University of Maryland. Several scientists from the MPIfR/Bonn participate in the FEEDBACK program. The goal of the programme is to systematically observe galactic massive star-forming regions. ‘First results from FEEDBACK and other recent SOFIA projects have yielded new discoveries, including bubbles of expanding gas caused by stellar winds, which can be observed clearly in the spectral line of ionized carbon (CII). This expansion causes further star formation,’ Dr Schneider explained. Furthermore, the rate at which new stars form in the Milky Way can also be determined by observing CII, providing insights into the evolution of our galaxy.

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Background information:

SOFIA is a Boeing 747SP jetliner modified to carry a 2.7-m diameter telescope. It is a joint project of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the USA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley manages the SOFIA program, science and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, and the German SOFIA Institute (DSI) at the University of Stuttgart. The aircraft is maintained and operated from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Hangar 703, in Palmdale, California.

GREAT: The German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies is a high-resolution spectrometer for astronomical observations at far-infrared wavelengths (0.06-0.60 mm), operating in a wavelength regime that generally is not accessible from ground-based observatories due to absorption in the terrestrial atmosphere. The instrument’s modular design allows integration of new technological advancements on short notice. GREAT is a development by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and the KOSMA/Universität zu Köln, in cooperation with the DLR Institute for Optical Sensor Systems. The development of GREAT is financed by the participating institutes, by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and within the Collaborative Research Centre 956, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).

SEDIGISM, a survey with the APEX telescope, studies molecular clouds and star formation in the inner galaxy

December 03, 2020

Observations of spectral lines of the carbon monoxide molecule allow us to probe the cold and dense molecular phase of the interstellar medium, from which new stars form. In addition, the velocity of the clouds can be measured via their Doppler shift. This allows us to link the clouds to the rotation of the spiral structure of our Milky Way, thereby providing a three-dimensional view of their distribution, which shows a rich variety of structures, such as filaments and cavities, resulting from all the physical effects that shape the interstellar medium.

Using the APEX telescope in the Chilean Andes, an international team of about 50 astronomers has completed the analysis of this observational effort, which covers 84 square degrees of the southern inner Galaxy, ranging in Galactic longitude from -60 to +18 degrees with a resolution of 30 arc seconds, only about 1/60 of the projected moon diameter on the sky. With a velocity resolution of 0.25 km/s, it provides the morphology, distance information and kinematics of all Galactic molecular clouds in approximately 2/3 of the inner Milky Way disk.

The survey is called SEDIGISM (Structure, Excitation and Dynamics of the Inner Galactic Interstellar Medium) and includes data taken in the years 2013-17 that will now be released to the astronomical community together with the first three scientific publications on the full data set.

“With the publication of this unprecedentedly detailed map of cold clouds in our Milky Way a huge observational effort comes to fruition”, says Frederic Schuller from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), the principal investigator of the SEDIGISM survey. “The team did a great job in delivering a new roadmap for molecular gas in the Galaxy as legacy of APEX for years to come.”

“Based on these data, a catalog of over 10,000 of these clouds in our Milky Way has been compiled, which show a highly structured Galactic distribution, albeit with relatively homogeneous physical properties, with only hints for potential environmental dependency of some cloud properties”, explains Ana Duarte-Cabral from Cardiff University, the lead author of the second paper. James Urquhart from the University of Kent, the lead author of the third publication, adds: “In conjunction with the previous survey of cold dust emission in the Galaxy (ATLASGAL), the fraction of clouds associated with dense gas could be estimated: only 10% of the clouds are sites of ongoing star formation”.

The observations targeted the rare ¹³CO and C¹⁸O isotopes of the carbon monoxide molecule that allow much more precise mass estimates of the clouds than the much more abundant ¹²CO, but require a very sensitive telescope. The 12-m APEX telescope (Fig. 2), with its precise mirror surface and a location at one of the world’s best sites for (sub)millimeter astronomy, has been key for the success of the project. Located at 5100m on the dry Chajnantor plateau in Chile, the low water vapour content of the site leads to the very high transparency of the sky that is needed for such observations.

Molecular clouds consist of the raw material from which new stars form. Imaging these clouds is therefore essential to derive important parameters such as the star formation efficiency in our Galaxy. The morphology and physical conditions of the clouds also provide the initial conditions that theories of star formation have to take into account. It is, therefore, crucial to spatially resolve the clouds, which was possible with the high-angular resolution of the survey.

The survey is not only interesting on its own, but also complements a number of other outstanding Galactic plane surveys, conducted in the last decade in the mid- to far-infrared wavelength ranges with space-based telescopes such as Spitzer and Herschel and, at longer wavelengths with APEX itself, which are all lacking the velocity information. The data of these surveys can now be re-analysed in conjunction with the new carbon monoxide line data. This will significantly enhance their role in the ongoing quest to understand the formation of stars, stellar clusters and ultimately the structure and dynamics of the Milky Way.

“Our survey represents a significant step towards understanding the structure of the Galaxy in which we live”, concludes Dario Colombo from MPIfR, co-author of all three publications, who is currently preparing another analysis of the data to establish the influence of spiral arms on molecular cloud properties.

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Background Information

SEDIGISM (Structure, Excitation and Dynamics of the Inner Galactic Interstellar Medium) is a survey of the southern Galactic plane covering an area of 84 square degrees in the sky, ranging in galactic longitude from -60 to +18 degrees with a resolution of 30 arc seconds. Two spectral lines of the carbon monoxide molecule were observed in the less abundant ¹³CO and C¹⁸O isotopologues with the APEX telescope.

ATLASGAL, the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy, is a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), and scientists from the ESO community and the University of Chile.

APEX, the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment, is a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) to construct and operate, since 2005, a single dish telescope on the Chajnantor plateau at an altitude of 5,100 metres above sea level (Atacama Desert, Chile). The telescope was manufactured by VERTEX Antennentechnik in Duisburg, Germany. The operation of the telescope is entrusted to ESO.

The research team comprises a number of authors, including Dario Colombo, Timea Csengeri, Min-Young Lee, Silvia Leurini, Michael Mattern, Parichay Mazumdar, Sac Medina, Karl Menten, Alberto Sanna, Frederic Schuller, Marion Wienen, Friedrich Wyrowski, all holding a present or recent affiliation with the MPIfR.

VLBA Network Finds Planet Orbiting a Small, Cool Star

August 04, 2020

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Illustration of the planetary system TVLM 513–46546; the newly discovered Saturn-like planet is seen in front of its … [more]

© Luis A. Curiel Ramirez

Using the supersharp radio “vision” of the continent-wide Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), astronomers have discovered a Saturn-sized planet closely orbiting a small, cool star 35 light-years from Earth. This is the first discovery of an extrasolar planet with a radio telescope using a technique that requires extremely precise measurements of a star’s position in the sky, and only the second planet discovery for that technique and for radio telescopes.

The technique has long been known, but has proven difficult to use. It involves tracking the star’s actual motion in space, then detecting a minuscule “wobble” in that motion caused by the gravitational effect of the planet. The star and the planet orbit a location that represents the center of mass for both combined. The planet is revealed indirectly if that location, called the barycenter, is far enough from the star’s center to cause a wobble detectable by a telescope.

This technique, called the astrometric technique, is expected to be particularly good for detecting Jupiter-like planets in orbits distant from the star. This is because when a massive planet orbits a star, the wobble produced in the star increases with a larger separation between the planet and the star, and at a given distance from the star, the more massive the planet, the larger the wobble produced.

Starting in June of 2018 and continuing for a year and a half, the astronomers tracked a star called TVLM 513–46546, a cool dwarf with less than a tenth the mass of our Sun in the constellation Boötes (The Herdsman). In addition, they used data from nine previous VLBA observations of the star between March 2010 and August 2011.

Extensive analysis of the data from those time periods revealed a telltale wobble in the star’s motion indicating the presence of a planet comparable in mass to Saturn, orbiting the star once every 221 days. This planet is closer to the star than Mercury is to the Sun.

Small, cool stars like TVLM 513–46546 are the most numerous stellar type in our Milky Way Galaxy, and many of them have been found to have smaller planets, comparable to Earth and Mars.

“Giant planets, like Jupiter and Saturn, are expected to be rare around small stars like this one, and the astrometric technique is best at finding Jupiter-like planets in wide orbits, so we were surprised to find a lower mass, Saturn-like planet in a relatively compact orbit. We expected to find a more massive planet, similar to Jupiter, in a wider orbit”, said Salvador Curiel, of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “Detecting the orbital motions of this sub-Jupiter mass planetary companion in such a compact orbit was a great challenge”, he added.

More than 4,300 planets have been discovered orbiting stars other than the Sun, but the planet around TVLM 513–46546 is only the second to be found using the astrometric technique. Another, very successful method, called the radial velocity technique, also relies on the gravitational effect of the planet upon the star. That technique detects the slight acceleration of the star, either toward or away from Earth, caused by the star’s motion around the barycenter.

“Our method complements the radial velocity method which is more sensitive to planets orbiting in close orbits, while ours is more sensitive to massive planets in orbits further away from the star”, said Gisela Ortiz-Leon of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany. “Indeed, these other techniques have found only a few planets with characteristics such as planet mass, orbital size, and host star mass, similar to the planet we found. We believe that the VLBA, and the astrometry technique in general, could reveal many more similar planets.”

A third technique, called the transit method, also very successful, detects the slight dimming of the star’s light when a planet passes in front of it, as seen from Earth.

The astrometric method has been successful for detecting nearby binary star systems, and was recognized as early as the 19th Century as a potential means of discovering extrasolar planets. Over the years, a number of such discoveries were announced, then failed to survive further scrutiny. The difficulty has been that the stellar wobble produced by a planet is so small when seen from Earth that it requires extraordinary precision in the positional measurements.

“The VLBA, with antennas separated by as much as 5,000 miles, provided us with the great resolving power and extremely high precision needed for this discovery”, said Amy Mioduszewski, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “In addition, improvements that have been made to the VLBA’s sensitivity gave us the data quality that made it possible to do this work now”, she added.

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Background Information

The research team comprises Salvador Curiel, Gisela N. Ortiz-León, Amy J. Mioduszewski and Rosa M. Torres. Gisela Ortiz-León, the second author, is affiliated with the MPIfR.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) operating the “Very Long Baseline Array” (VLBA) is a facility of the National Science Foundation, under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

The IAU PhD Prize recognises the outstanding scientific achievement in astronomy by PhD students around the world. There are a series of awards, one for each of the IAU’s nine Divisions, with each division selecting a winner in its own field of astronomy.

The IAU Executive Committee awarded the IAU PhD Prize for 2017 in the Division A Fundamental Astronomy to Gisela Ortiz Leon, Instituto de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica, Mexico, for her research in Ultra-high precision astrometry with centimeter and millimeter very long baseline interferometry.

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ALMA and APEX discover massive conglomerations of forming galaxies in the early Universe

April 25, 2018

Using the ALMA and APEX telescopes in Chile, two international research teams with participation from scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, have uncovered startlingly dense concentrations of galaxies that are poised to merge, forming the cores of what will eventually become colossal galaxy clusters.
The results are presented in two research papers to appear in the journals Nature and The Astrophysical Journal.

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Artist’s impression of of the actual configuration of galaxies in SPT 2349. Such mergers have been spotted using the ALMA and APEX telescopes and represent the formation of galaxies clusters, the most massive objects in the modern Universe.

© ESO/M. Kornmesser

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) have peered deep into space — back to the time when the Universe was one tenth of its current age — and witnessed the beginnings of gargantuan cosmic pileups: the impending collisions of young, starburst galaxies. Astronomers thought that these events occurred around three billion years after the Big Bang, so they were surprised when the new observations revealed them happening when the Universe was only half that age! These ancient systems of galaxies are thought to be building the most massive structures in the known Universe: galaxy clusters.

Two international teams led by Tim Miller from Dalhousie University in Canada and Yale University in the US and Iván Oteo from the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, used both telescopes, ALMA and APEX, to uncover startlingly dense concentrations of galaxies that are poised to merge, forming the cores of what will eventually become colossal galaxy clusters.
Peering 90% of the way across the observable Universe, the first team observed a galaxy protocluster named SPT 2349-56. The light from this object began travelling to us when the Universe was about a tenth of its current age.
The individual galaxies in this dense cosmic pileup are starburst galaxies and the concentration of vigorous star formation in such a compact region makes this by far the most active region ever observed in the young Universe. As many as 15 000 stars are born there every year, compared to just one in our own Milky Way.

The Oteo team discovered a similar megamerger formed by ten dusty star-forming galaxies, nicknamed a “dusty red core” because of its very red colour, by combining observations from ALMA and the APEX.
These forming galaxy clusters were first spotted as faint smudges of light, using the South Pole Telescope and the Herschel Space Observatory. Subsequent APEX and ALMA observations showed that they had unusual structure and confirmed that their light originated much earlier than expected — only 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang.

The new high-resolution ALMA observations finally revealed that the two glows spotted by APEX and Herschel are not single objects, but are actually composed of fourteen and ten individual massive galaxies respectively, each within a radius comparable to the distance between the Milky Way and the neighbouring Magellanic Clouds.
“The duration of the starburst event in each of the galaxies is short compared to the evolution time scale of the proto-cluster”, explains Axel Weiß from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy who is co-author on both publications. “The fact that we see so many starburst galaxies in both clusters at the same time suggests either a so far unknown mechanism to trigger the activity over several hundred thousand light years or the presence of gas flows from the cosmic web to replenish the gas supply in the active galaxies.”

“These discoveries by ALMA are only the tip of the iceberg. Additional observations with the APEX telescope show that the real number of star-forming galaxies is likely even three times higher. Ongoing observations with the MUSE instrument on ESO’s VLT are also identifying additional galaxies”, comments Carlos De Breuck, astronomer at ESO, the European Southern Observatory.

Current theoretical and computer models suggest that protoclusters as massive as these should have taken much longer to evolve. By using data from ALMA, with its superior resolution and sensitivity, as input to sophisticated computer simulations, the researchers are able to study cluster formation less than 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang.
“How this assembly of galaxies got so big so fast is a mystery. It wasn’t built up gradually over billions of years, as astronomers might expect. This discovery provides a great opportunity to study how massive galaxies came together to build enormous galaxy clusters“, concludes Tim Miller, a PhD candidate at Yale University and lead author of the paper in Nature.

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Montage with three views of the observations of SPT 2349, a distant group of interacting and merging galaxies in the early Universe. The left image is a wide view from the South Pole Telescope that reveals just a bright spot. The central view is from Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) that reveals more details. The right picture is from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and shows that the object is actually a group of 14 merging galaxies in the process of forming a galaxy cluster.
© ESO/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Miller et al.

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The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) is a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), Onsala Space Observatory (OSO), and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) to construct and operate a modified prototype antenna of ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre Array) as a single dish on the Chajnantor plateau at an altitude of 5,100 metres above sea level (Atacama Desert, Chile). The telescope was manufactured by VERTEX Antennentechnik in Duisburg, Germany. The operation of the telescope is entrusted to ESO.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is an international partnership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan, together with NRC (Canada), NSC and ASIAA (Taiwan), and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA -the largest astronomical project in existence- is a single telescope of revolutionary design, composed of 66 high precision antennas located on the Chajnantor plateau, 5000 meters altitude in northern Chile.

MPIfR affiliations: Axel Weiß is co-author in both publications and Maria Strandet, who just received her PhD in the IMPRS research school at MPIfR, is co-author in the Nature paper.

https://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/pressreleases/2018/6

Mapping Spiral Structure for an Improved Picture of our Home Galaxy

October 12, 2017

Astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have directly measured the distance to a star-forming region on the opposite side of our Milky Way Galaxy from the Sun, using the Very Long Baseline Array. Their achievement reaches deep into the Milky Way’s terra incognita and nearly doubles the previous record for distance measurement within our Galaxy.
Their results are published in the 13 October issue of the journal Science.

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Artist’s view of the Milky Way with the location of the Sun and the star forming region (maser source G007.47+00.05) at … [more]

© Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF; Robert Hurt, NASA.

The “Atacama Pathfinder Experiment” in Chile starts its second decade

February 09, 2016

During 10 years of operation, the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) 12 m submillimeter telescope has significantly contributed to a wide variety of astronomy science areas, ranging from the discoveries of new interstellar molecules to large and deep imaging of the submillimeter sky, leading to insights into star formation from our Milky Way to distant starburst galaxies in the early Universe.

On the occasion of this anniversary, a celebration was held at the APEX base station in Sequitor, San Pedro de Atacama, including a visit to the APEX telescope at the Chajnantor plateau, 5100 m above sea level.

Guests of the event visiting the 12 m APEX telescope, 5100 m above sea level in the Chilean Atacama desert.

The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) is a radio telescope of 12 m diameter for observations at submillimeter wavelengths. It was built at a very specific site, the Chajnantor plateau in the Atacama desert in Northern Chile, at an altitude of more than 5000 m above sea level, thus providing access to the otherwise blocked submillimeter range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The Chajnantor plateau also hosts the telescopes of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).

On January 25-26, the 10^th anniversary of APEX was celebrated at the APEX base station in Sequitor, San Pedro de Atacama, at a better accessible altitude of only 2500 m above sea level. A number of special guests were present at the occasion, including the German ambassador in Chile, Rolf Schulze, the President of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Prof. Martin Stratmann, and the Director General of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), Prof. Tim de Zeeuw. For the partners in the APEX collaboration, principal investigator Prof. Karl Menten and APEX project manager Dr. Rolf Güsten from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany, and Prof. John Conway, Director of the Swedish Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) were attending the event. Fig. 1 shows the group of visitors at the high-altitude APEX site.

“In designing and operating APEX, ESO, OSO and the Max-Planck-Society set a perfect example of how long-term international collaboration can push the limits in astronomy”, said Martin Stratmann, President of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Within the last ten years, about 2000 scientists have used data obtained with APEX for their science projects, resulting in more than 500 publications. Major APEX results include the discovery of five new molecules in the interstellar medium and also large surveys like ATLASGAL (the “APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy”), or LESS (the “LABOCA Survey of the Extended Chandra Deep Field South”).  Both have used the Large APEX Bolometer Camera (LABOCA) to measure the star formation activity in the Milky Way and at early epochs of the Universe. The APEX telescope and its access to the southern sky, in particular the inner part of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds, is visualized in Fig. 2.

“It’s a great pleasure to celebrate a decade of astronomy with APEX, and ESO is very proud to be a member of this partnership. Not only is APEX an amazingly productive telescope in its own right, but it also wonderfully complements its more recent neighbour on Chajnantor, ALMA”, said ESO’s Director General, Tim de Zeeuw.

The APEX project was initiated by Karl Menten, Director at the MPIfR and head of its Millimeter and Submillimeter Astronomy Research department. The outstanding personal commitment of Karl Menten and Rolf Güsten was honored by Martin Stratmann at the 10-year anniversary ceremony in Sequitor: “I am deeply impressed by the passion and dedication that has led to the design and installation of APEX in 2003. Right at the very beginning of operation, APEX had proven its significance in studying the southern celestial hemisphere.”   Indeed, Menten recalls: “Right from the start, APEX has delivered wonderful data. And now, after ten years of research, APEX continues its important role not only as a pathfinder, but also as a complementary instrument for both, the ALMA interferometer here at Chajnantor and for the airborne observatory SOFIA.”

“From the engineering point of view, APEX has been a big success and its performance surpassed our expectations right from the beginning”, said Rolf Güsten. “Within the last ten years, we have continuously improved the performance of the telescope. Today the suite of state-of-the-art receivers and camera systems places the facility at the leading edge of submillimeter astronomy.” This continuous stream of innovative technology, constantly opening new scientific opportunities had always been an integral part of the project’s philosophy.

“The collaboration over the last ten years between three very different institutions has worked extremely well, each bringing its own strengths to the project. APEX has an exciting future, both doing its own unique science and in supporting ALMA observations”, said John Conway, the Director of OSO.

With the official opening of the ALMA, the importance of APEX has even increased in providing the complementary instrument to the high-resolution interferometer in order to image the large scale structure of molecular clouds and to select the target sources for a detailed investigation. “Whatever can be detected with APEX, can be imaged with superb precision with ALMA”, explained Karl Menten. “APEX truly is a pathfinder!”  The importance of the telescope’s complementary role to ALMA’s mission was also stressed by Martin Stratmann: “Astronomy and astrophysics have always been core elements of our research portfolio. However, the size and diversity of experiments led to fundamental changes in the way we approach our questions in practice. Nowadays, breakthroughs demand for a large network of complementary telescopes and instruments. APEX’ role as a pathfinder shows how the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft can strike out in a new and promising direction.”
Central part of the Galactic plane as seen by the APEX LABOCA camera merged with large-scale images from the Planck satellite (upper image). Southern part of the Milky Way including Southern Cross and the Eta Carina region (bright reddish nebula to the left and above the cross) and the two Magellanic Clouds (left of the telescope).
© Upper part: APEX Team/Csengeri et al. 2016; Lower part: ESO/Y. Beletsky (Optical Sky Image); ESO (APEX telescope); Composite image in the lower part created by C. Urquhart.