This is a very cool result, and an extremely interesting application of current ALMA Observatory capabilities, in particular its long baselines to get higher spatial resolution (i.e., how small are our pixels in the X and Y dimension). But to achieve it, the team had to make very detailed adjustments to the correlation and observation setups so that all those molecules could be observed during several observation runs, within the constraints of our current system.

With the Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU), many of those molecules will be able to be observed in many less observing setups, thanks to our wider bandwidth, but also with more detail in the spectral dimension (for each individual "pixel") thanks to our new correlators. So the number of spectral setups will be reduced, and the total observing time will be also reduced, allowing for more interesting science to happen!

That's the promise of the WSU, and we're working hard to fulfill it!

#ALMA #AtacamaLargeMillimeterArray #AtacamaLargeMillimeterSubmillimiterArray #WSU #WidebandSensitivityUpgrade

https://www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-releases/alma-reveals-57-faces-of-a-dying-star/