These two antennas 15 meters in diameter detect millimeter radio waves from the depths of the universe. This image is not extracted from a science fiction film. It was also not taken in the Atacama desert, in Chile, which houses the largest astronomical observatory in the world, Alma, made up of 66 branches. This arid soil is that of the Bure plateau, perched at 2,550 meters above sea level in the Massif du Dévoluy, in the Hautes-Alpes. The silver parables are turned towards our celestial vault which, in the coming days, will be crossed by rains of weather visible to the naked eye. But they, what interests them are the most distant galaxies, hundreds of millions of light years …
They are twelve, divided into T along the Noema observatory of the Institute of Millimetric Radioastronomy (IRAM). The whole constitutes the most powerful radiotelescope in the northern hemisphere: it is an interferometer, which combines the signals captured by each device and thus forms a single giga-antenne. Everything is played in a tiny calculation room filled with machines.
