Close up of the world's largest telescope

ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array), started in 2003, has been conducting scientific observations since the second half of 2011, but on March 13, it has just begun to officially operate in Chile.

ALMA is located deep in the Atacama desert, the Chajnantor plateau, in northern Chile, where water vapor in the earth's atmosphere does not hinder vision, facilitating observation.

However, the high position and hot dry make it difficult for scientists to work here.

The ALMA telescope is designed to observe events occurring several hundred million years after the universe was formed. That was the period when the first stars started glowing. Alma will help humans understand why the universe has the same appearance and structure today.

ALMA consists of 66 very large parabolic antennae (50 antennas were in operation on the inauguration), each about 12m high and weighing over 100 tons. When connected together, they form a giant radio telescope with a diameter of 16km.

Optical telescopes, like the Hubble Space Telescope, can also observe stars. But the difference of ALMA is that it has the ability to collect forms of light that the human eye cannot see. Thanks to that, it can detect cold, dense clouds - which make stars.

ALMA is the result of many countries' cooperation including the European Union, the United States, Japan and Chile with an estimated cost of over 1 billion euros.