The Atacama desert was chosen for its dryness and clarity.
The feature in the gas around the old star has never been seen before and is probably caused by a hidden companion star orbiting it.
The data reveals the shell around the star - which shows up as the outer circular ring - as well as a very clear spiral structure in the inner material.
The astronomers were also surprised to find far more matter than expected had been ejected by the red giant which is in the last phase of its life as is expanding as its temperature soars.
Professor Matthias Maercker, of Bonn University in Germany, said: 'We’ve seen shells around this kind of star before but this is the first time we’ve ever seen a spiral of material coming out from a star together with a surrounding shell.'
Red giants like R Sculptoris are major contributors to the dust and gas that provide the bulk of the raw materials for the formation of future generations of stars, planetary systems and subsequently for life.
The shot published in Nature is a glimpse of the potential of ALMA that will not even come into full operation until next year.
Study co-author Dr Wouter Vlemmings, of Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, said: 'When we observed the star with ALMA not even half its antennas were in place.
'It’s really exciting to imagine what the full ALMA array will be able to do once it’s completed in 2013.'
Late in their lives stars up to eight times bigger than the Sun become red giants and lose a large amount of their mass in a dense stellar wind..
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