There is no public transport to Chajnantor, so you will need to rent a car.ĪLMA roadmap. The closest airport to Chajnantor is the El Loa International Airport located in Calama, about 120 kilometres west of the observatory. Please note that airfares to and from Chile can get quite pricey when booking shorter than 3 months in advance.

Children under 16 years are not allowed to go up. Only ALMA certified vehicles and drives with an ALMA “driver’s license” are allowed to get to the AOS. At the AOS are the antennas and the Correlator. The drive from the OSF to the Array Operations Site (AOS) and APEX, located at 5000 m altitude, takes about 50 minutes (~25 km). Note that transportation for the public visits is arranged (see here). If you arrive by own means, the ALMA Operations Support Facility (OSF), at 2900 meters above sea level, is located 40 driving minutes from San Pedro de Atacama. APEX is a collaboration between the Max-Planck Institute for Radioastronomy (MPIfR), the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO), and the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The Chajnantor plateau is also the site of APEX, the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment, a 12-metre diameter antenna observing the Universe at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths. The ALMA project is a partnership between Europe, Japan and North America in cooperation with the Republic of Chile.

ALMA is at one of the highest observatory sites on Earth, at an elevation of 5,000 metres on the Chilean Chajnantor plateau. ALMA is comprised of a giant array of 54 12-m and 12 7-m antennas. Information for weekend visits to ALMA OSF is available here.ĪLMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is the major new facility for observations in the millimetre/submillimetre regime. Please note that visitors do not have access to ALMA AOS.

Down with the sickness midi