Photo – Page 52 – National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Replacing waveguides with fiber optic cables

Laying Down the Lines

Part of the major upgrade to the Very Large Array (VLA) was to replace its original metal piped wave guide with fiber optics. Digging the deep trenches for the 2760 miles of fiber was no easy task!

Greening of the Desert at the VLA

During a particularly wet monsoon season in the deserts of central New Mexico, the lands around the Very Large Array explode in bright green grasses.

Building in Magdalena where VLA Project was run

VLA Magdalena office

In the 1970s, the Very Large Array project was run out of this office building in the nearby town of Magdalena, New Mexico.

Precision Engineering

The Precision Engineering Division of the Central Development Lab designs and tests receiver hardware for all of NRAO’s telescopes and for cutting-edge receivers used by customers around the world.

Engineering at the Speed of Light

Christophe Jacques, an engineer at the NRAO Technology Center in Virginia, specializes in high-frequency data transmission. He worked in the Local Oscillator group to build and test the unique timing devices that allow ALMA’s high frequency data to be combined by supercomputer.

Experts in Receiver Technology

Francoise Johnson and Sivasankaran Srikanth are engineers at the Central Development Laboratory in Charlottesville. They invent, design, and build the state-of-the-art receiver technologies used in our telescopes around the world.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the U.S. National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
	Founded in 1956, the NRAO provides state-of-the-art radio telescope facilities for use by the international scientific community. NRAO telescopes are open to all astronomers regardless of institutional or national affiliation. Observing time on NRAO telescopes is available on a competitive basis to qualified scientists after evaluation of research proposals on the basis of scientific merit, the capability of the instruments to do the work, and the availability of the telescope during the requested time. NRAO also provides both formal and informal programs in education and public outreach for teachers, students, the general public, and the media.
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