<img alt=“phot-35a-09-fullres.jpg” src=“https://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/phot-35a-09-fullres.jpg” width=“340” height=“249” hsapce=10 border=0 align=right />
The first antennae of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) began the array’s slow invasion of Chajnantor, a 5000-metre high plateau in the Chilean Andes, aboard a bright yellow crawler yesterday. The final ALMA observatory will link 66 such antennae in changing configurations on the 5000-metre-high plateau. The site’s dry, thin air will enable the observatory to make very precise measurements of millimetre-wavelength and submillimetre-wavelength sources in the universe, including “cold clouds of gas and dust where new stars are being born and remote galaxies towards the edge of the observable universe,” according to the ESO.
Photo: ESO