New Mexico Radio Telescope Hears Jupiter-Area Calls
- Filed under: Science
- Date: Feb 24,2008
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is in the process of transforming its Very Large Array radio telescope into the—wait for it—Expanded Very Large Array, thanks to digital technology that will boost the Socorro, N.M., facility’s already impressive ability to tune in on black holes, supernovae and the rest of the deep space menagerie.
Half of the Very Large Array’s (VLA) 28 dish antennas—each weighing 230 tons—have already been upgraded so it can collect eight simultaneous data streams at about two giga- (billion) hertz, up from the previous capability of four data streams at about 50 mega- (million) hertz.
The rest of the 28 antennas—which made their debut on the silver screen in the 1997 movie Contact, starring Jodie Foster and based on the eponymous Carl Sagan sci-fi novel—will go digital by 2012, increasing the facility’s power 10-fold. The makeover will also replace original components that had been in operation since it was built in the 1970s. Read the rest of this entry »
