News

“Be Safe”: our cybersecurity program

“Be Safe”: our cybersecurity program

On our desktops, mobile devices, at work or at home. There are multiple risks of becoming a victim of a scam or intrusion on the Internet. We learned about it first-hand when we suffered the cyber-attack on the observatory in October 2022. To be more prepared, the IT team created the Be Safe plan, our cybersecurity program that seeks...

read more
Breaking records: how we surpassed 4,000 hours of observations

Breaking records: how we surpassed 4,000 hours of observations

To know our cosmic origins, we must observe as many hours as possible of the research selected for each cycle. That's why we are so pleased to have surpassed 4,000 hours during this Cycle 10. The highest number ever observed since we began operations. Our previous record - in Cycle 5 - was 3,787 hours, and so we are...

read more
Bill Dent says goodbye to ALMA: “I came for 3 years and stayed for 15”

Bill Dent says goodbye to ALMA: “I came for 3 years and stayed for 15”

It was early morning in the control room at OSF. Bill Dent was alone with an operator and typing away when the information on his screen began to slow to a complete stop. Unable to communicate with the antennas, they called the engineers to no success. “We had no contact, so we called management and IT, and that's when...

read more
With energy and enthusiasm we celebrated these National Holidays together

With energy and enthusiasm we celebrated these National Holidays together

SCO and OSF dressed in red, white and blue this September to share with our colleagues the celebrations of the chilean national holidays. In Santiago we enjoyed a different kind of lunch, with a delicious asado and typical desserts such as motes con huesillos. At OSF, we added traditional Chilean games such as hopscotch to the celebrations. And this...

read more
Putting out the cigarette: our No-Smoking Program

Putting out the cigarette: our No-Smoking Program

Thinking that health is a priority for everyone, but sometimes external help is needed, our Safety department led an no-smoking campaign for all ALMA staff and our contractors who wanted to quit smoking. The incentive? If they succeeded in overcoming three months of abstinence, they could even be rewarded with a bicycle. Thus, in the first stage of this...

read more
The Power Group, the energy of ALMA

The Power Group, the energy of ALMA

From turning on the light in a room and running a coffee maker to maintaining the antennas and correlator operations at OSF and AOS.... for everything to work as usual there has to be a team behind it working day and night: that's the Power Group. “All this never appears in the daily and monthly ALMA report because its...

read more