Scientists and dignitaries from North America, Europe, and Chile broke ground today (Thursday, November 6, 2003) on what will be the world’s largest, most sensitive radio telescope operating at millimeter wavelengths.

Location, location, and location: the old real-estate adage about what’s really important proved applicable to astrophysics as astronomers used the sharp radio vision of the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array to pinpoint the distance to a pulsar.

Astronomers studying the most distant quasar yet found in the Universe have discovered a massive reservoir of gas containing atoms made in the cores of some of the first stars ever formed.

Scientists from around the globe are gathered in Socorro, New Mexico, to mark the tenth anniversary of the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) , a continent-wide radio telescope that produces the most detailed images of any instrument available to the world’s astronomers.

The closest Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) yet known is providing astronomers with a rare opportunity to gain information vital to understanding these powerful cosmic explosions. Extremely precise radio-telescope observations already have ruled out one proposed mechanism for the bursts.

Using the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array radio telescope, astronomers have discovered a newly-exploded star, or supernova, hidden deep in a dust-enshrouded supernova factory in a galaxy some 140 million light-years from Earth.