Eye Into the Universe
When I was a child, we had a large painted board outside our tyre shop in Layyah, Pakistan,” says Kamran Ali, otherwise also known as ‘Kamran on Bike’ owing to his penchant for travelling across the world on his bicycle. “It was a painting of a lonely country house with snowcapped mountains and a sky full of stars.” There was a small boy in the painting who was gazing at the stars. A verse by Allama Iqbal was painted over the top: Mohabbat mujhay un jawanon se hai, sitaron pe jo daltay hain kamand. [I love the youth that aim for the stars].
Much like the boy in the photo, Kamran would often stare at this painting during his visits to the shop, unaware that a few decades later he would find himself exploring the Alma observatory in Northern Chile — one of the most ambitious astronomy projects in the world.
What: The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (Alma) is an astronomical interferometer (a group of telescopes, radio telescope antennas and mirror segments that collectively work as one telescope that provides a higher resolution) otherwise also known as “the world’s most powerful observatory” for studying the universe. It’s designed to spot some of the most distant, ancient galaxies and to observe areas around young stars for the birth of new planets.