Alma telescope opens its eyes – in pictures

The most powerful millimetre/submillimetre-wavelength telescope in the world opens for business and reveals its first image

  • Alma's view of the Antennae galaxies, created using measurements from 16 of the dishes installed on the Chajnantor plateau in the Atacama desert, Chile. The Antennae are a pair of distorted spiral galaxies that are colliding about 70m light-years from EarthPhotograph: European Southern Observatory
    Alma opens its eyes: Alma view of the Antennae Galaxies

  • A composite of Alma and Hubble observations of the Antennae galaxies. The blue colours represent the best-quality optical image taken of this region of space so far – by Hubble. The red, pink and yellow show previously unseen wavelengths of light emanating from the vast carbon monoxide clouds that float in and between the galaxies, imaged by Alma for the first time. The clouds contain gases with a total mass several billion times that of our sun
    Alma opens its eyes: Antennae Galaxies composite of Alma and Hubble observations

  • A side-by-side comparison of Alma and Very Large Telescope (VLT) observations of the Antennae galaxies
    Alma opens its eyes: comparison of Alma and VLT observations

  • A wide-field view of the region around the Antennae galaxies
    Alma opens its eyes: wide-field view of the region around the Antennae galaxies

  • The Antennae galaxies' position in the constellation of Corvus
    Alma opens its eyes: Corvus

  • Nineteen Alma antennas on the Chajnantor plateau
    Alma opens its eyes: Chajnantor plateau

  • View of the Chajnantor plateau from nearby Cerro Toco
    Alma opens its eyes: Alma antennas seen from Cerro Toco
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