The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile.
In the past years, NOVA has developed and produced the ALMA Band 5 and 9 receivers.
NOVA is presently producing the ALMA Band 2 receivers. This is a cryogenic heterodyne receiver offering state-of-the-art sensitivities at signal frequencies from 67 - 116 GHz.
The tender concerns the procurement of 4 different types of Waveguide assemblies
Nederlandse Onderzoekschool voor Astronomie (NOVA)
NOVA is the alliance of the astronomical institutes of the universities of Amsterdam, Groningen, Leiden, and Nijmegen, legally represented by the Leiden University. Astronomy is considered to be top-science in The Netherlands. NOVA was selected as top-research school in 1998 following an open national competition, and is as such receiving substantial funding by the Dutch Ministry of Education. NOVA’s mission is to carry out frontline astronomical research in the Netherlands, to train young astronomers at the highest international levels, and to share our new discoveries with society.
As part of this mission, NOVA’s instrumentation program aims to strengthen the technical expertise at the universities, and to develop and construct new instrumentation for world-class observatories. Development and production of the ALMA Band 2 Receivers for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is an important part of this instrumentation program.
Leiden University is the legal representative of NOVA.
For more information about NOVA you can visit the website: https://nova-astronomy.nl
Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan.
ALMA operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ).
The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
ALMA is a single instrument composed of 66 high-precision antennas located in the II Region of Chile, in the District of San Pedro de Atacama, at the Chajnantor Altiplano, 5,000 metres above sea level (see Figure 1).
ALMA's primary function is to observe and image with unprecedented clarity the enigmatic cold regions of the Universe, which are optically dark, yet shine brightly in the millimeter-submillimeter part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
ALMA Band 2 Receiver Project
In the past years, NOVA has developed and produced the ALMA Band 5 and 9 receivers.
NOVA is presently producing the ALMA Band 2 receivers. This is a cryogenic heterodyne receiver offering state-of-the-art sensitivities at signal frequencies from 67 - 116 GHz.
A consortium of three institutes executes the work:
The ALMA/NOVA group within the Kapteyn Institute, the Astronomy department of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands
GARD (Group for Advanced Receiver Development) within the University of Göteborg, Sweden
INAF (Italian National Institute for Astrophysics) in Bologna, Italy
NOVA leads in the project and performs this work under contract to ESO.
The challenging science goals, large scope, and remote location of the ALMA project, combined with the Receiver Cartridges’ cryogenic operating temperatures (as low as 15 K or -258°C), place high demands on the performance and reliability of the Band 2 Receivers Cartridges and their components.
The tender concerns the procurement of 4 different types of Waveguide assembly.