ALMA has arrived, and she is enormous. The Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, was officially opened
today in the high desert of the Chilean Andes. Guests including
the president of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, gathered to celebrate
the the largest ground-based astronomical project in the world.
ALMA consists of 64 of these huge antennas, shown here against a
backdrop of the southern Milky Way on the left and the
Magellanic Clouds at the top. They work together to produce
images of extended objects in the night sky such as giant cosmic
clouds of gas and dust. Even during its construction, ALMA has
been working hard. With only a dozen of its antennas online, it
produced stunning images of the colliding Antennae Galaxies and
a glowing red, spiral star system. New Scientist reports,
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