Radio Telescopes at the Very Large Array (VLA) near Socorro, New Mexico. During the summer of 2014 I participated in a Chautauqua short course at the VLA. I always had a desire to learn more about this facility, and by 2014 I was living close enough that I could make the drive from my home to this facility in a single day. During my employment at Moravian College I had participated in several Chautauqua short courses, so the structure of the program was familiar. Participants were permitted to go into the control rooms, the laboratories, and actually onto the dish of one of the units. It was a wonderful experience.
VLA telescopes can be repositioned on these railroad tracks.
This is the machine that moves and positions the individual telescopes on the tracks.
We have climbed into the dish of one of the telescopes through the trap door. I am the person to the far left.
A person near the edge of the dish viewing other telescopes in the distance.
The feed horns in the center of the dish.
The feed horns as seen in the room below the dish.
More feed horns in the room below the dish.
More radio telescopes at the VLA in New Mexico.
The radio telescope at Green Bank, West Virginia. I participated in a Chautauqua short course at this site in 1998 when the radio telescope that is pictured was approximately half-constructed. I took this picture in 2010 when the telescope was in routine service.