ALMA antennas

Footage showing some of the 66 individual dishes, or Antennas, that make up ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) on Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes. ALMA's Antennas can be up to 16km apart, but come together to act as a single telescope. Doing this requires that each 7-12m antenna is positioned with millimetre precision by the dedicated ALMA Transporters. Together they observe light wavelengths between infrared and radio waves, a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum full of interesting objects, from nearby dust and gas to the most distant objects in the universe. ALMA can probe the building blocks of planets and stars as well as the earliest galaxies, and target specific molecules for observation. This makes ALMA's incredibly remote and inhospitable location worth the hardship of building an observatory 5000m above sea level.