Editing Atacama Large Millimeter Array (section)

===Images from initial testing===
[[Image:Antennae Galaxies composite of ALMA and Hubble observations.jpg|thumb|[[Antennae Galaxies]] composite of ALMA and [[Hubble Space Telescope|Hubble]] observations]]
[[File:HL_Tau_protoplanetary_disk.jpg|thumb|[[HL Tauri]] protoplanetary disk.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://public.nrao.edu/news/pressreleases/planet-formation-alma|title=Birth of Planets Revealed in Astonishing Detail in ALMA's 'Best Image Ever' - NRAO: Revealing the Hidden Universe|work=nrao.edu}}</ref>]]

By the summer of 2011, sufficient telescopes were operational during the extensive program of testing prior to the Early Science phase for the first images to be captured.<ref>{{cite news|title=ALMA Opens its Eyes|url=http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-room/press-releases/297-alma-opens-its-eyes|access-date=4 October 2011|newspaper=ALMA Press Release|date=3 October 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111005042527/http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-room/press-releases/297-alma-opens-its-eyes|archive-date=5 October 2011}}</ref> These early images gave a first glimpse of the potential of the new array that will produce much better quality images in the future as the scale of the array continues to increase.

The target of the observation was a pair of colliding galaxies with dramatically distorted shapes, known as the [[Antennae Galaxies]]. Although ALMA did not observe the entire galaxy merger, the result is the best submillimeter-wavelength image ever made of the Antennae Galaxies, showing the clouds of dense cold gas from which new stars form, which cannot be seen using visible light.