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How Many Miles of Fiber Optic Cable Does the VLA Use?

-- | September 21, 2015

Question: My son and I toured the VLA about 8 years ago when you were first converting from copper to fiber. We just toured with friends on the first Saturday of September. How many miles of fiber were laid? Also, are there ancillary computing systems which assist or support the Correlator? — Steve

Answer: I checked with the engineers at the VLA who told me that the VLA has 2557 miles of fibre in the ground, and an additional 3 miles of fiber per antenna in each antenna. As for the computing systems used with the correlator, there is specialized computer hardware and software that collects and processes the information that the correlator gathers from the VLA antennas.

Jeff Mangum

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