ALMA Exhibition Opens in Santiago

Impressive photographs and videos showing the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) take centre stage at the free exhibition, ALMA, exploring our cosmic origins, held at the Espacio Fundación Telefónica, Santiago, Chile, between 7 October 2015 and 3 January 2016.

The exhibition, which is divided into four sections, will describe the innermost workings of the most powerful ground-based observatory in history. It will explore the story behind its development and construction in addition to explaining what ALMA has already discovered about our cosmic origins.

The fascinating and diverse exhibition will be accompanied by a series of free activities, including night-sky observations, music performances based on the cosmos, and robotics and astrophotography workshops. Round tables on topics such as art and astronomy, astro-engineering, and how to get the most out of the Chilean skies will also be held.

Teachers and students will have access to special activities, such as talks by ALMA astronomers for schools; radio astronomy classes for teachers; and diverse educational workshops that link the exhibition with different curricular content from mathematics, physics, history and geography, science, language and communication and the visual arts.

At a time when almost half of the world’s professional observations of the Universe are performed on Chilean soil, this exhibition presents a rare opportunity to learn astronomy and new technologies hand in hand with the ALMA team.

ALMA, an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of ESO, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. This exhibition was prepared by the ALMA JAO outreach team in Chile.

Courtesy of European Southern Observatory