Outreach

Dr. Luis Alberto Zapata gave a seminar on ngVLA

Santa María Tonantzintla, Puebla, August 14, 2023.- Within the framework of the institutional seminars, today Dr. Luis Alberto Zapata González, director of the Institute of Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics (IRyA) of the UNAM, gave the conference "next generation Very Large Array”.
In the seminar, Dr. Luis Alberto Zapata spoke about the efforts that the IRyA of the UNAM is making to carry out the project of the next generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) which, once completed in the year 2035, will be the most powerful and sensitive terrestrial radio observatory.
The next generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) observatory will become an interferometric array that will consist of more than 240 antennas with a diameter of 18 meters distributed in the southern United States and northern Mexico. The ngVLA will eventually improve the sensitivity of observatories such as the Atacama Large Millimeter Array and the Karl Jansky VLA by more than an order of magnitude. This observatory will also have the capacity to make ultra-sensitive images of thermal emission with an angular resolution of the order of one thousandth of a second of arc that could reveal planets in formation in the innermost parts of nearby circumstellar disks, as well as study the first galaxies in the Universe. With the signing of a collaboration agreement, UNAM, through the Institute of Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics (IRyA), will begin to search for the best sites to locate the antennas in northern Mexico, as well as the design of the antenna bases. 

 
Dr. Luis Alberto Zapata González

Dr. Luis Zapata obtained his PhD in Astrophysics in 2006, which he carried out jointly between the "Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics" in the United States and the IRyA of UNAM. He has worked as an astronomer for the observatory "The Submillimeter Array" located on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, in the United States, as well as for the "Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy" in Germany. He is currently Director of the Institute of Radioastronomy and Astrophysics of the UNAM located in Morelia , Michoacán. His main area of research is the study of star formation, planetary systems and the origin of life in the Universe using observations at submillimetre wavelengths with observatories located in different parts of the world.
The seminar was broadcast on YouTube and can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB9TqcijFAk