An enduring puzzle in astronomy is how stars are born. We don't yet know the answer, but we do know that newly forming stars are hidden behind a veil of dust too thick to be penetrated with ordinary optical telescopes. Radio telescopes can peer through the veil, but single telescopes give too coarse a picture to be helpful. The solution to this problem lies in using interferometers, groups of small radio telescopes placed large distances apart, whose signals combine to simulate a single, very large telescope.
In 1987, the BIMA (Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association) consortium was founded. BIMA is a combined effort of three of the country's outstanding astronomy departments to design, build, and use some of the world's most sophisticated observational equipment. Located at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, near Mt. Lassen in California, the BIMA array is the largest millimeter-wave interferometer in the world, linking nine radio telescopes (10 antennas are planned) to form one very large telescope. Astronomers use BIMA primarily to study radio waves emitted by molecules and dust in some of the coldest parts of the Universe. The BIMA array has been used to investigate how stars form, how the Sun and the Solar System came into being, the physical conditions on other planets in the Solar System (planetary meteorology), the molecular gas distribution and flow in galaxies outside the Milky Way, and to search for an explanation of the extreme activity of active galactic nuclei.
![[Photo of a BIMA Telescope]](bima.gif)
![[Photo of Kartik Sheth]](kartik.gif)
"The single biggest reason why I came to Maryland was the quality of the program and the BIMA research group. Nowhere else could I have worked with some of the top astronomers in the world and on equipment as powerful as this. I've only been here for two months and I'm already going out to work on the array in California. And I don't feel atypical at all. That's what's so incredible about this program.
I still remember the single event that hooked me on astronomy. I was 8 or 9 years old and still living in Bombay. My aunt sent me one of the first books produced by NASA with images from the Voyager missions. It was called The Solar System. I still remember every picture in that book."