# @kirstenalana on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/21r_gOlyWW
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/2431279-kirstenalana-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/27bafde333.jpg
- **Posted:** 2015-05-18T21:46:28.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Kirsten Alana (@KirstenAlana) — https://gondola.cc/KirstenAlana

## Caption

I couldn't come to this country, being interested in astronomy, without visiting The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (or, ALMA). Stargazing alone, though amazing, just wouldn't have been enough! ALMA is an international partnership of the NRAO (North America), the ESO (Europe) and the NAOJ (Japan) in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. Public tours are fairly new, as is ALMA itself. Really it's only 2 years old as far as operationally, though construction began before 2009. ALMA is the largest and most expensive land-based astronomical project on earth, after the Hubble Telescope, which is in space - it is a single telescope made up of 66 high precision antennas. They are located up on the Chajnantor plateau, at 5000 meters above sea level in the Atacama Desert. Here in the photo I'm walking amongst 4 of the antennas that were being tested and repaired during our visit to the part of the facility that's farther down the mountain. (I did a live tour on Periscope in case you want to go see the recording.) The entire facility had a construction cost of more than 1.6 Billion dollars but what ALMA is able to see and discover is unparalleled in the field of astronomy and science and it uses the highest altitude supercomputer in the world in order to process all the data the antennas gather. I'll be doing a blog post about it with more information soon but the last tidbit I want to leave you with is that ALMA means soul in Spanish, and I thought that was so perfectly fitting. #OnlyInSouthAmerica

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## Tags

onlyinsouthamerica

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