Puzzling Over The Long Wavelength Array

What's that dad gum thang over there? John wonders:

Seems a bit redundant...or maybe it's just an improvement over 1975 radio telescope technology. Have you heard anything about this?:

The University of New Mexico plans a new radio telescope near the site of the Very Large Array telescope west of Socorro.

Project director Lee Rickard says the university hopes to have the first field of 256 antennas ready about November 2010.

The arrays are called stations, and Rickard says up to 16 stations could be built in the following four years.

State Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons and UNM officials signed an agreement this week to start building the first two sites of the Long Wavelength Array on state trust lands in Catron and Socorro counties.

I reply:

Here’s a little bit more. Apparently it’s for low frequencies, and will features stations spread over a broader area (most of SW NM).

The LWA will be a low-frequency radio telescope designed to produce high-sensitivity, high-resolution images in the frequency range of 10-88 MHz, thus opening a new astronomical window on one of the most poorly explored regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. This will be accomplished with large collecting area (approaching 1 square kilometer at its lowest frequencies) spread over an interferometric array with baselines up to at least 400 km, located mainly in the state of New Mexico.