Under the spell of the Magellanic Clouds
{"Image ImageDescription": "This  beautiful image of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array  (ALMA), showing the telescope\u2019s antennas under a breathtaking starry  night sky, comes from Christoph Malin, an ESO Photo Ambassador. This is a still frame taken from one of his painstakingly created time-lapse videos of ALMA, which are also available (see ann12099).Located  on the Chajnantor Plateau at an elevation of 5000 metres, ALMA is the  world\u2019s most powerful telescope for studying the Universe at  submillimetre and millimetre wavelengths. Construction work for ALMA  will be completed in 2013, and a total of 66 of these high-precision  antennas will be operating on the site. Glowing  brightly in the sky, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds stand out  above the antennas. These nearby irregular dwarf galaxies are  conspicuous objects in the southern hemisphere, even with the naked eye.  These galaxies are both orbiting the Milky Way \u2014 our galaxy \u2014 and there  is evidence that both have been greatly distorted by their interaction  with the Milky Way as they travel close to it. \u00a0ALMA,  an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North  America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA  construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on  behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory  (NRAO), and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical  Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides  the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning  and operation of ALMA. Links  ALMA time-lapse compilation 2012 video More about ALMA at ESO Joint ALMA Observatory ESO Photo Ambassadors"}