ALMA time-lapse 4

In March 2016, several ESO photo ambassadors visited some of ESO's world-leading observatories in the Atacama desert of Chile. This was the "Fulldome Expedition", with the mission to capture stunning visuals of ESO's observatories and the crystal-clear Chilean night sky.

The thousands of images and videos they produced will be used in the upcoming ESO Supernova Planetarium & Visitor Centre, set to open in Garching, Munich in spring 2018. As the world's first open-source planetarium, all of the visuals captured on the Fulldome Expedition will be made available by ESO, completely free of charge, for the public and fellow planetariums around the world.

This timelapse, taken by photo ambassador Petr Horálek, shows a highly sped-up depiction of a night's operation at ESO's Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), located high up in the mountains of Chile. Some of the telescope's 66 antennas appear to be nodding as they make corrections for the Earth's rotations to continue observing the Universe.

The rotating effect was achieved using the Vixen Polarie mount, which was vertically set on a tripod.