ALMA's gemelos

An image of a cluster of ALMA antennas on remote Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Atacama Desert. Although each dish may appear to be a separate telescope, in fact they work together as one large instrument through a technique known as interferometry. This creates a virtual telescope far larger than would be possible to construct as a single dish. Like a powerful set of binoculars ALMA allows researchers to probe the cool universe, from the most distant galaxies to the building blocks of life.