Alfonso Serrano Perezgrobas gushes whenever he talks about astronomy and the people of Mexico. Serrano, director of Mexico's National Institute for Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics (INAOE), says gazing at the stars has been a favourite activity of the inhabitants of a high valley between Mexico's mountain ranges - people.
Who have always been close to the heavens, unlike the Spanish conquistadors, whose faces were turned downward in search of gold and other treasures of the soil.
"Astronomy is thousands of years old here," he said. "The Mayas, the Aztecs and other people of the region knew more about the stars and observed them more precisely at that time than the Europeans."
The tradition has been revived in modern form with the completion of an ultramodern new telescope hailed as the largest and most sensitive radio telescope on Earth.
The Large Millimetre Telescope (LMT,) which opened late last year at the top of the 4,850-metre high Sierra Negra in Mexico's Puebla state, will be able to look 13.7 billion years back in time - further back than any other known telescope, according to the University of Massachusetts, which helped build the 120-million-dollar telescope.
"This telescope will dramatically improve our understanding of the birth of stars as well as shed important light on the processes which occurred in the early universe," Fred Byron, interim vice chancellor for research at UMass Amherst, said as construction began several years ago.
Unlike optical telescopes, which detect light rays, the Sierra Negra viewer will pick up faint radio signals at wavelengths of 1 to 4 millimetres that began travelling toward Earth as the universe was first formed.
The telescope weighs 2,500 metric tons and rests on a 540-cubic-metre concrete base. The bowl-shaped antenna has a diameter of 50 metres and a surface of 2,000 square metres.
"It is currently the only one of its kind and the largest in the world," Serrano said proudly. Serrano is the chief co-ordinator of the project, which Mexico hopes will catapult it into a leading role in radio astronomy.
Serrano has been part of the project since the idea to build an LMT took shape in the 1990s at INAOE in Tonantzintla near the city of Puebla. Scientists searched for a site for years, settling on Sierra Negra, which is about 250 kilometres east of Mexico City.
The mountain, a defunct volcano, meets all the criteria for an optimal location for viewing of the southern sky and the middle of the Milky Way galaxy that includes Earth's solar system. The high elevation offers air of such low density that oxygen must be pumped into some of the spaces at the observatory, but is ideal for clear viewing.
"In winter we ]have conditions here like the Antarctic," Serrano said. "We are certain that we will be able to see the most and farthest at that time of year. We will push open a new window on the universe."
The neighbouring volcano, Orizaba, is Mexico's highest mountain at nearly 5,800 metres. Its name in the pre-Spanish period, Citlaltepec, means "Star Mountain" and might have been an inspiration for selecting the nearby sight.
The LMT was supposed to have been operational by 2003, but costs more than doubled from the original 50-million-dollar estimate to 120 million dollars. The telescope was designed by engineers at MT Aerospace in Mainz, Germany.
"It is a spectacular story and a dream for every engineer to plan such a construction," said Thomas Zimmerer, director of the mechatronic department at the company. There are similar telescopes in Effelsberg, Germany; Sardinia, Italy; and in Chile.
MT Aerospace also designed the technology that the antenna uses to move and align itself. MT Aerospace engineer Steffen Seubert, commenting on the design challenge, said moving 2,500 metric tons in exact alignment in an arc-second is quite a feat.
It will take more than a year before the telescope can receive radio waves precisely enough using its 187 large reflectors to deliver a new picture of the young universe. Scientific operation begins in 2008.
Then those who came after the Mayas and the Aztecs will report on their version of the formation of the galaxies.
-dpa
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