Radio Astronomy in Mexico: A historical perspective

Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2025

Radio astronomy in Mexico developed comparatively late, beginning in the late 1970s, and for several decades progressed without national radio facilities. This review traces the historical evolution of the field in Mexico, emphasizing the role of individual researchers, institutional frameworks, and international collaborations that enabled the growth of a nationally based radio astronomy community. Early progress relied heavily on open-skies access to major international facilities, particularly those of the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and led to Mexican participation in key instrumental developments such as the upgrade of the Very Large Array. A major milestone was the design and construction of the Large Millimeter Telescope in Mexico, which in due course became a crucial element of the Event Horizon Telescope and contributed to the first images of supermassive black holes. Alongside instrumental advances, Mexican radio astronomers have made influential contributions to a wide range of research areas, most notably star and planet formation, including protostellar jets, protoplanetary and debris disks, astrochemistry, and proto-brown dwarfs, as well as to stellar radio astronomy, ultra-high precision astrometry, exoplanet searches, radio surveys, and studies of galaxies and black holes. By situating these scientific achievements within their historical and institutional context, this review highlights how radio astronomy in Mexico evolved from an emerging activity into an internationally visible body of work, and discusses its prospective role in future facilities such as the next-generation Very Large Array.