Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array radio telescope have found previously unseen evidence that galaxy collisions trigger energetic quasar activity in relatively nearby galaxies.

Scientists and engineers at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) have made a giant leap toward the future of radio astronomy by successfully utilizing the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in conjunction with an antenna of the continent-wide Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) using the longest fiber-optic data link ever demonstrated in radio astronomy.

For the first time, astronomers have determined the intrinsic size and shape of the highly charged region of radio emission surrounding what most scientists believe to be a supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy.

The smallest protoplanetary disk ever seen rotating around a young star has been detected by an international team of astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array radio telescope.

Astronomers have found evidence for the most powerful magnetic field ever seen in the universe. They found it by observing a long-sought, short-lived afterglow of subatomic particles ejected from a magnetar — a neutron star with a magnetic field billions of times stronger than any on Earth and 100 times stronger than any other previously known in the Universe.

Planets apparently can form in many more binary-star systems than previously thought, according to astronomers who used the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array radio telescope to image protoplanetary disks around a close pair of stars.