For many years, French radioastronomers had had been dreaming to extend their domain to millimetre waves, and had designed for this purpose an interferometer: a radio-telescope made up of many interconnected parabolic antennas. For their part, German colleagues were planning a large millimetre-wave radio-telescope. Since these projects were complementary, the scientific authorities decided to combine the two. So was created an institute whose base is at Grenoble, France, and that heads two instruments: an interferometer on the Bure plateau in the Dévoluy in the Rhône-Alpes region, made up six 15m-diameter mobile antennas–the number of antennas is being gradually increased to twelve­­–and a 30m-diameter radio-telescope in the Sierra Nevada in Spain. (Spain is a member of the project.)

caption : The Bure plateau interferometer - credits : IRAM/Rebus