Recollections of "Tucson Operations", Softcover reprint of hardcover 1st ed. 2005 The Millimeter-Wave Observatory of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Astrophysics and Space Science Library Series, Vol. 323

The Early Years.- Construction of the Telescope.- Radio Lines from Molecules.- Dispatched to Tucson.- Expanding the Tucson Facilities.- Providing Adequate Electricity.- Lightning and Kitt Peak.- Software.- Millimeter-Wave Electronics.- Quantifying mm-Wave Astronomy.- Scheduling.- Improving the Performance of the 36-ft Telescope.- The 25-m Telescope.- Odds and Ends.- The MMA and ALMA.- The Twilight Years.

No books have been published yet on this subject Rather unique monograph presenting one of the key stories in the history of mm-wave observations in the USA (and therefore pretty much in the world) Comes at the right moment The mm-wave part of the spectrum is about the last window that remains to be opened for ground-based astronomy (gravitational waves being the other part) Currently, two major new telescopes (GTM and ALMA) are being built to operate in the mm-wave band They can be seen as a direct spin-off of the Tucson Operations ALMA (see www.alma.nrao.edu/info) is the most internationally and heavily sponsored project (at least 500 million dollar) and will become operational in 2007 With these new tools arriving within a few years, the astronomical community is funding an increasing amount of projects in mm-wave astronomy Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras