Observations at a wavelength of 3 mm (86–102 GHz) started in October 2006, and the detections of six clusters by the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect were announced in 2008.

It is located on Mauna Loa, Hawaii, and observes at 3 mm (86–102 GHz) to minimize foreground emission from other, non-thermal sources.

[1] The receivers are based on monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) technology, with low-noise amplifiers cooled to 15 K, which have 20 GHz bandwidths[1] and provide 46 dB of amplification.

The system temperatures are between 55 and 75 K.[1] AMiBA started in 2000, with funding for 4 years from the Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics Project of the Taiwan Ministry of Education.

[2] For the largest and brightest four of these—Abell 1689, 2261, 2142 and 2390—comparisons were made with X-ray and Subaru weak lensing data to study the cluster layout and radial properties, specifically of the mass profiles and baryon content.

[5] The YTLA has been repurposed with the goal of detection and characterization of molecular gas at high redshift through the technique of intensity mapping.

Understanding the gas content and evolution throughout the history of the Universe informs astronomers about the processes of star formation and galaxy growth.

Although it is much smaller than powerful telescopes such as ALMA and the VLA, the YTLA can provide critical and unique information on galaxy evolution.