The Milky Way glitters brightly over ALMA antennas, in this image taken by the ESO Ultra High Definition Expedition team as they capture the site in 4K quality.

In the Chajnantor Plateau in the Atacama Desert, one of the highest and driest places on Earth, a gentle “rain” is falling. It is light from space, in millimetric and submillimetric wavelengths, a natural, scarce and precious resource. It is well-known that these waves are full of information about our cosmic origins, that is why people thirsty for this knowledge have gathered here to collect, channel and analyze it.

This is what gives rise to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), currently the largest radio telescope in the world. This achievement is the result of an international association between Europe (ESO), North America (NRAO) and East Asia (NAOJ), in collaboration with the Republic of Chile, to build the observatory of the “Dark Universe”.