New Mexico's Very Large Array Of Radio Telescopes Offers A Glimpse Into Science In The Past, The Present & Beyond
With a cloudless blue sky and views for miles around of sand and bare mountains in the distance the desert looks as if nothing exists in the harsh area.
But drive long enough, an hour or more into the cloudless expanse and people are often surprised by the 27 enormous metal radio telescopes rising out of the flat plain at an instant; mechanical life where no other life exists.
“They look like flowers blooming in the desert,” she said. “Some people will stop and ask what we are doing out there; others will have made the trip themselves to see how big they are.”
The large satellite dishes are actually pieces of one of the world’s most sensitive radio telescopes.Dedicated in 1980 and costing millions, the 10-story tall telescopes are the result of more than 70 years of radio telescope tinkering and development that now help us see light years into space, and seat our place in the stars, says Stanley.
The telescope array is the end result of scientists across American and Europe delving into a complicated and emerging new way of looking at the cosmos, radio astronomy.
Dave Finley, public information officer for the VLA, says it took decades to develop what is considered today as the world’s premiere radio telescope.
He said radio waves were first discovered coming from space in the 1930s and early scientists created backyard versions of radio telescopes in an effort to scoop information from the cosmos.
After the Second World War, there was a boon in radio astronomy.
“There was a lot of surplus radar equipment around the world,” Finley relates. “Scientists grabbed onto it and started doing some radio astronomy with it.”
Finley said even though the equipment helped sate some scientific urges, it just wasn’t good enough for the intended use.“It was meant for military radar and not meant for astronomy. They adapted it to do some basic astronomy but quickly realized they needed to make their own systems.And they did many different things, but realized to get any kind of good radio telescope, they would need a dish, used to collect the radio waves, at least 20 miles wide, which was very inconceivable, costly, and impractical and something that was almost never to be built.
That is where the science of interferometry, which is taking two very similar telescopes and using them in such a way so they are linked as one. The idea was first tested at Green Bank West Virginia in the 50s, where three telescopes were linked as one and the concept worked.
“The scientists took it to the National Science Foundation, and Congress approved the proposal in 1972. Construction began out there on the plains in 1974. The first one was up in 1975, and the dedication was October 10, 1980,” Finley said.
No one is actually sitting at the VLA scanning the sky all the time, Finley explains. Those who want to use the telescope array must submit proposals to the National Science Foundation, which judges the projects on merit. Those people are then awarded time to use the telescope.
A package of where the group wants to look at in the cosmos is transmitted to the telescope staff, which then uses the telescope within parameters of optimal conditions to run the project. After finished data is then given back to said research groups, according to Finley, the next project is tossed on the scope.
The telescope has been involved in many things over the years since it started operating.
“It’s been able to contribute to almost everything in astronomy,” he said. “We observe the sun and other objects in our solar system. We are constantly looking at regions where stars are born and the VLA is heavily involved in how we can figure out how stars and planets are formed.”
One advantage the VLA has over other telescopes, Finley said, is it can peer through dust and gases where light gathering telescopes cannot. How is this possible? Finley said it is complicated, but explains that radio wave values are set for different radio waves the scope collects, and a color can be assigned to the final product.
The telescopes though have recently been showing their age, and with the initial $48 million price tag in the early 1970s (which adjusted for inflation is more than $400 million today), a $98 million dollar upgrade has taken place over the last decade, including new electronics, computers and overhauls.
“It’s like when you take an old car and you put a brand new engine in it, all new computers and electronics, you have something that doesn’t look that different from the outside, but it performs far better [on the inside],” he said.
Stanley said one of the primary goals of VLA is education, whether it be getting kids interested in space, or gathering information for national space studies. Additionally, she says there is value in VLA because of all the spinoff technologies that have resulted from the project.
“Have you ever had an MRI scan? Do you use a cell phone? Are you dependent on satellite communications? All of these kinds of technologies had to be invented so that we could do radio astronomy," explains Stanley. "Many of the modern conveniences that make our life easier were all born out of the technology that needed to be invented in order to do radio technology."
[With our education programs] we’re trying to take the average person and the average kid in school and explain to them the benefits of radio astronomy, and [how their] implementation [makes] your everyday life better.”
With all our new technologies evolving, what is the importance of radio astronomy in the future? Stanley said it would be a pretty boring place to not know what is going on in other areas and used the analogy of a doctor.
“I would be profoundly limited if you were my only patient. That is the reason why we explore. That is the reason why our species goes out and tries to figure out what our place is in space is. We try to figure out how other stuff forms so we can have more to compare and contrast to within our own local system,” she said.
As far as the search for other life on other planets, although VLA was featured prominently in the Jodie Foster movie “Contact”, about a group of radio observers searching for radio waves from extraterrestrials, Finley said SETI has little or nothing to do with what the VLA does, though the facility made an interesting backdrop for the movie.
He said those groups listen to large areas of the sky, where VLA’s primary mission is to get high detail photographs.
“But if the SETI guys did get a good radio signal, I am sure they would come to us to get them a really good view of what the area of space where it came from was,” he said.
Having been a movie set and a renowned science installation, Stanley said there is much interest on the VLA. Visitors can take a free self-guided tour from 8:30am until sunset.
“The self-guided tour takes you around the site visiting 16 places of interests including a working antenna on the array,” she explains. “At the visitor’s center, there are exhibits, a documentary movie explaining the VLA as well as its science and technology plus a gift shop.”
On the first Saturday of every month at 11am, 1pm and 3pm, Stanley herself offers a guided tour. Visitors need to show up at least 15 minutes in advance and reservations are not needed. Admission is $6 for adults, $5 for seniors and free for those 17 and under. The only time the guided tours are postponed is due to snow during the winter months. The installation itself is located nearly 6,970 feet above sea level.
All said, the guided tours, according to Stanley, are a great way to get a chance to ask her and other staff on site at the VLA about the various attributes and other information of the telescope.
“A lot of the times the question [though] is “Where is the bathroom…and where is Jodie Foster?”
Jason Ogden
A graduate of Central Michigan University in Journalism, Jason has served as a news reporter for the Oscoda County Herald, Oscoda Press and Iosco County News-Herald. He is also an avid fisherman.
Make Sure To Stay At:
Water Canyon RV Park, less than 20 miles away, offers hiking, bird watching, picnicking, and camping at the foot of the Magdalena Mountains at an elevation of 6800 feet.