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Wednesday, January 11, 2006

VLA

Wow! What a place! In the empty, silent Plains of San Augustin of western NM - Voila! The VLA (Very Large Array) radiotelescope dishes, arrayed on rails across the grassland like a peace symbol (on three sets of rails, each set 120 degrees apart from one another, kind of like a bird footprint). The VLA is an important part of the global VLBA (Very Large Baseline Array). The waveguide electronics are being upgraded to fiber optics, for even faster data transmission. A portion of the movie "Contact," starring Jodie Foster, was filmed here.


The antennas swung from the SW sky to the eastern sky over the space of an hour or so.


We can hear you, but we can't understand you!

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