CARL SAGAN WAS HERE.

Trip Start Oct 19, 2011

Trip End Jan 19, 2012

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What I did

the very large array

Flag of United States Socorro, New Mexico
Thursday, January 12, 2012

On our way out of Las Cruses and White Sands National Monument (and Missile Test Range) we headed north up I-25 to Socorro - another small town with characteristic small town feel. We were headed to see one of modern astronomy's great achievements - the Very Large Array. The Very Large Array (VLA) consists of 27 "satellite dishes" spread out in a "Y" pattern in the high desert west of Socorro. It is in a "Radiowave-Free Zone" and about 30 minutes before getting to the site you lose all cell reception. The "Y" pattern runs due north, due east and southwest. Nine radio telescopes per arm. This system was designed in the late 60s and finally went on line in 1981. This, of course, is the same time that Carl Sagan was producing his epic "Cosmos" television series. It makes sense that the site should have been important to a show about astronomy, and according to the staff on-site Sagan was there several times. If I recall correctly, the last 15 minutes of the episode "The Edge of Forever" was dedicated to the VLA

The Very Large Array - VLA

. It is also designated as the National Radio Astronomy Observatory or NRAO for short.
There was something stark and beautiful about these perfectly aligned radio telescopes out in the high desert, with mountains all around and not much else. Some cows out to pasture in the distance (reminded me of the sheep paddock in which the radio telescope in Parkes, NSW is located) and a few basic, "scientific looking" buildings. Not much else, which is why it's so beautiful. It wasn't quiet, as each telescope has an air conditioning unit to keep the electronics cool as well as some special cooler to chill the receiver to just above absolute zero (18 degrees Kelvin, if I recall correctly, which was about -427 Fahrenheit). When we arrived all the dishes (which are about 90 feet in diameter) were pointing to the zenith. After lunch they had moved and were reading radio waves from some distant object just above the Western horizon. One of the most amazing parts of the setup is their new fiber optics communications system which allows them to transmit and receive 120 gigabits of data per second, per telescope. The entire 30 years of use up to the installation of fiber optics was only 30TB of data. Now this amount of data is recorded every few seconds. Sometimes the VLA takes part in studies with other radio telescopes across the US. At these times it is part of the VLBA - the Very Large Baseline Array. Essentialy it's a radio teselscop 5,000 miles long. Pretty nifty what those scientists can come up with…
Bought a T-shirt and patch at the gift shop then went for a second walk out to the telescopes. Couldn't help feeling giddy about the fact that I was standing in the same spot that Carl Sagan had, that he saw these mighty machines too, with the same mountain back drop, and would have driven through Socorro and Magdalena to get here back then too. The astronomy was cool but the link to Sagan was supreme. We headed on to Albuquerque next...

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