With a bit of technological help, you can capture your own amazing images of the night sky.
Black Holes are strange creatures. They are objects so dense that light cannot escape them. Since black holes don’t…
The Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) will help astronomers solve some of the greatest mysteries of modern astrophysics,…
A century ago two prominent astronomers held a debate at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The topic concerned…
In the last twenty years, thousands of planets have been discovered outside the Solar System. Some are bigger than…
In the past century, black holes have transformed from being a mere curiosity into a key element of modern…
In the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius, in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, sits a supermassive…
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Band 6 SIS Mixer
The largest millimeter array in the world relies on the tiniest electronic parts. These are mixers for the receivers used in all ALMA antennas. Their job is to convert the cosmic radio source into an electrical current and then combine, as quietly as possible, the signals from the array's metronome, called the local oscillator, with the signals the antenna receives from space. This eletronic mixing slows the data rate to a pace that the supercomputer can handle. These tiny mixers were designed by our Central Development Laboratory then built and tested at the University of Virginia's Microfabrication Laboratory.
NRAO Making Waves
Announcements and Achievements
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NRAO Signs Cooperative Agreement with UNAM For Development of the Next Generation Very Large Array
The U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) have signed a memorandum of understanding establishing their collaboration on the Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA), a new radio observatory currently in design and development at NRAO.
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Update: ALMA’s Recovery from October 29 Cyberattack
On October 29, 2022, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) suffered a cyberattack. We are working hard to resume observations before the end of the year.
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NRAO’s Marian Pospieszalski Receives EuMA Pioneer Award
The European Microwave Association (EuMA) has announced Marian Pospieszalski— a senior research engineer at the National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)— as the recipient of its 2022 Pioneer Award. The EuMA Pioneer Award recognizes individuals responsible for noteworthy advances in the field of microwaves that have had a lasting and significant impact on the microwave community.
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NRAO Expands Radio Dynamic Zone Testing with Support from NSF
Following a generous grant from the National Science Foundation’s Spectrum Innovation Initiative (SII), NSF’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) will expand efforts to establish and support the co-existence of research and commercial entities across the radio spectrum.
From the Earth, a pulsar looks like a star that has a pulse, a rapid beat picked up only by radio telescopes.
