Eyes on the Heavens

Photograph by Dave Yoder, National Geographic

Light from the setting sun dances on antennas forming part of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), high in Chile s Atacama Desert. The world's largest and costliest ground-based telescope, ALMA was officially inaugurated in 2013 and has already delivered on expectations, allowing researchers to peer at 26 distant galaxies showing bursts of star formation.