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How Does the Spacing of the Radio Telescopes in the VLA Affect How it Does Scientific Measurements?

-- Michael | September 2, 2020

Question:

From your website it appears that the dishes are not uniformly spaced along each arm. Is the spacing a geometric taper or some other pattern. Would you be interested in having a high school senior look at alternative spacing or has that been beaten to death? Also, do you process the arms pairwise or possibly all three with some adaptive noise rejection around the main beam?

My grandson is looking for a senior project and is interested in astronomy. I thought this would be a good time for him to learn about dishes and arrays.

Thanks,

Michael Flicker

-- Michael

Answer:

I think that our previous answer to the general question about how a radio interferometer works provides an answer to your question.  In fact, the topic of antenna placement and spacing has been an active area of research in the development of radio telescope interferometers for many decades.

-- Jeff Mangum