The 30-meter radio telescope is located at an altitude of 2850 m on the Veleta Peak of the Sierra Nevada, near the city of Granada. It is one of the two observatories of the Institute of Millimetric Radio Astronomy (IRAM), an organisation managed by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the German Max Planck Society (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft) (MPG) and the National Geographic Institute (IGN) of the Spanish Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda.
This telescope consists of a conventional parabolic antenna capable of scanning large cosmic objects such as nearby galaxies and interstellar clouds.
It has receivers at wavelengths of 3, 2, 1 and 0.8 mm that record up to 160,000 high-resolution frequency channels for mapping the molecular gas of extended nebulae.
It is also equipped with cameras working at 2 and 1 mm wavelengths, dedicated to observing dust in nearby molecular clouds and galaxies, including the most distant (and youngest) in the known universe.
