Two new and powerful research tools are helping astronomers gain key insights needed to transform our understanding of important processes across the breadth of astrophysics.

Astronomers using the partially completed ALMA observatory have found compelling evidence for how star-forming galaxies evolve into ‘red and dead’ elliptical galaxies, catching a large group of galaxies right in the middle of this change.

The detailed views of star-formation in the Antennae Galaxies are the first astronomical test images released to the public from the growing Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and confirm that this new telescope has surpassed all others of its kind.

Humanity’s most complex ground-based astronomy observatory, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, has officially opened for astronomers at its 16,500-feet elevation site in northern Chile.

Highly specialized, scientifically advanced antennas come together to capture never-before seen details about the cosmos.

The ultimate in high altitude, high-tech catering has arrived in Chile to serve chilled provisions to the telescopes at the largest astronomical complex in the world, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array has passed a key milestone crucial to producing the high-quality images that will be the trademark of this revolutionary new tool for astronomy.

The ALMA astronomical observatory took another step forward and upward, as one of its state-of-the-art antennas was carried for the first time to Chile’s 16,500-foot-high plateau of Chajnantor on the back of a giant, custom-built transporter.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, an immense international telescope project under construction in northern Chile, reached a major milestone on April 30, when two ALMA antennas were linked together as an integrated system to observe an astronomical object for the first time.

Astronomers celebrated today the formal acceptance of the first North American antenna by the Joint ALMA Observatory. ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, is a gathering armada of short-wavelength radio telescopes whose combined power will enable astronomers to probe with unprecedented sharpness phenomena and regions that are beyond the reach of visible-light telescopes.