View of the Chajnantor plateau

The Sun is rising behind the high peaks which demarcate the Chajnantor plateau at the eastern edge. Located at an elevation of 5000 m in the Andes of the II Region of Chile, the Chajnantor plateau is one of the best sites in the world for submillimetre astronomical observations and is the home of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. ALMA will be composed of 66 antennas which can be spread across the desert plateau over distances from 150 m to 16 km. The plateau is naturally not perfectly flat over its whole extension and in some areas shows the undulations we see in this spectacular view towards the north. In the foreground, the remnant of a characteristic snow formation known as “penitentes”.