ALMA Operations and the Magellanic Clouds

Time-lapse video at the ALMA Array Operations Site (AOS), located at 5000 metres altitude on the Chajnantor plateau, in the II Region of Chile. As the sky appears to rotate clockwise around the south celestial pole, the Magellanic Clouds – irregular dwarf galaxies that are orbiting the Milky Way - can be seen in the video. ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array is the largest astronomical project in existence and is a truly global partnership between the scientific communities of East Asia, Europe and North America with Chile. ESO is the European partner in ALMA.