At the heart of the Chajnantor plateau in Chile lies the Atacama Large Millimetre/sub-millimetre Array (ALMA). It is the most complex astronomical observatory ever built on Earth and is used to observe light from space at millimetric and submillimetric wavelengths.
The facility can study cosmic light that straddles the boundary between radio and infrared – most objects in the universe emit this kind of energy, so the ability to detect it has been a driver for astronomers for decades.
ALMA uses a system called an ‘interferometer’ that arrays many small antennas across a wide area and links them together to operate as one huge telescope. By combining 54 parabolic antennas with 12m diameters and 12 parabolic antennas with diameters of 7m, it creates one huge radio telescope comprising 66 antennas in total.
The astronomy facility is the brainchild of an international partnership between the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the National Science Foundation...