Mighty metal

The mighty metallic panels that comprise the dish of this 12-metre Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) antenna glisten in the sunlight in this stunning shot from the Chajnantor Plateau.

These metallic panels create a large reflecting surface that plays the same role as the mirror of an optical telescope: it collects radiation coming from distant astronomical objects, and focuses it into a detector that measures the radiation.