The
Submillimeter Array (SMA), constructed at the top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii
as a collaborative project of the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) and the Academia
Sinica Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics (ASIAA), is the
first radio interferometer making observations at submillimeter wavelengths.
A total of eight 6-m radio telescopes comprise the array with currently
working receiver bands at 230, 345, and 690 GHz. The array will have 8
receiver bands covering the frequency range of 180-900 GHz. The backend
is flexible analog-digital correlator with a full bandwidth of 2GHz, which
is very powerful to cover several line emissions simultaneously. The SMA
can achieve an angular resolution of 0.1 arcsec at highest, providing
at least 60 times sharper images than those the existing submillimeter-wave
single-dish telescopes can provide. Using the SMA, we study how stars
and planets form, how stars evolve, the center of our Galaxy and nearby
galaxies, what is the looks of the early universe, and so on.
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