After assembly or maintenance is completed inside the Antenna Assembly Building, a Very Large Array antenna is carefully lifted and hauled back out into the array on board an antenna transporter. The transporter rides the rails that form a large Y-shape across the San Agustin Plain in central New Mexico.
Half of a Supercomputer
This is half of the original supercomputer used by the Very Large Array from 1979 until 2009. It used over 650 printed circuit cards with 85,000 integrated circuits, and it required 50,000 watts of power. It works as a correlator, performing 1.7 trillion operations a second to combine the waves received by 351 pairs of VLA antennas into a single set of data. The new correlator that replaced this one is 1000 times faster.
Original Correlator for the VLA
Here is a close-up view of the original correlator for the Very Large Array used from 1979 until 2009. It used over 650 printed circuit cards with 85,000 integrated circuits, and it required 50,000 watts of power. It works as a correlator, performing 1.7 trillion operations a second to combine the waves received by 351 pairs of VLA antennas into a single set of data. The new correlator that replaced this one is 1000 times faster.
Shelf of Spares
These shelves hold the original spare modules for the antennas of the Very Large Array. The VLA’s science observing program is critical, so if a component of the antenna electronics went bad, it could be swapped out for one of these right away with minimal down time.
VLA from a Distance
The Very Large Array sits on the Plains of San Agustin in New Mexico at an elevation of over 7,000 feet. Its 27 25-meter dish antennas can be seen for miles across the desert.
A VLA Antenna Without Its Surface
The Antenna Assembly Building got its name for being the birthplace of the antennas of the Very Large Array. In this photo from 1979, a VLA antenna Backup Structure has been placed on a yoke and base, but it has not yet received its 25-meter dish.