the very large array

the drive there is relaxing and the conversation is upbeat, with expanse of the plains of san agustin stretching out before us. we have recently shed our winter coats in favour of our summer skin. life is good.

my mind wanders on the drive. i can't help but think about the countless super-facilities that have existed out here in the desert. the manhattan project, area 51, and of course, the very large array. perhaps this is where the american government wants to keep all the physicists...

about 30 minutes outside of socorro we see a mountaintop glimmer. being an astronomer, sean immediately knows what it is: the magdelena ridge observatory, currently under construction. more physicists for the desert! next we pass through a very out-of-place forest which removes me from my daydreaming. runoff from the surrounding mountains undoubtedly keep this forest alive: the stifling heat of the desert is weathered by the bitter cold of winter for the life here. another desert contrast added to the list.

eventually we pass a narrowing point of sorts, and the plains open up in front of us, revealing the VLA in the distance. like a desert mirage, they exist only as wavy-images, the light refracting through the hot air wafting up from the ground, mere speckles in the distance. yet we know better. these are no ordinary speckles, and there is an oasis where that mirage lies. the trickery of the coyote will have to wait for another day.

turning off highway 60, we enter the national radio astronomy observatory (nrao) site. we pass over the train tracks used to move the individual telescope dishes, catching our first postcard-glimpse of the array, shown to the left. note that each of these dishes is 25m in diameter! the train tracks are not merely for postcards though; that is how the antennae are moved from place to place. by putting the antennae in different geometric patterns and factoring in the motion of the earth as it spins on its axis throughout the day, different resolutions and observing capabilities are possible.

after pulling into the main parking lot (which was eerily empty), we find our way into bob's office, one of sean's old climbin' buddies and an employee at the VLA. as far as i could tell, bob was also a post-office box service for sean, as he had a trunk full of thunderbirds toys ordered from the UK for sean to bring back to his young son, and a digital-SLR camera he had been holding for sean. toys for everyone! bob is much thinner than santa though. plus he knows way more than santa about the VLA. this is important as bob is to be our guide on this fair day.

as we make our way across the compound the dry desert air wisps playfully in front of me, gently throwing up dust, as if to simply remind us of it's presence. the desert never lets you forget where you are. with any luck though, it will tolerate our presence for the day.

moving further, the proverbial kid-in-a-candy-shop moment begins for me. it's really something else when a textbook, something that seems so foreign and abstract lying amongst the ivory towers, comes alive in front of your eyes in Dust Bowl XXVI. heading towards one of the large dishes we pass a dusty graveyard, containing a maligned melange of broken-down telescopes, busted radiators, and surplus army equipment that never found any use here either.

lady luck is with us today, as bob informs us one of the dishes is smack in the middle of an equipment retrofitting and is non-operational. this means we can walk right into the heart of the machine. donning our incredibly dorky orange hard-hats, we approach the dish. it towers over me like a massive monument, one that will leave a footprint for the remainder of civilization. in this year, the 400th anniversary of galileo first using a telescope to expand the vision of humanity into the heavens, i stand before the device that completely changed the way we look at the heavens.

climbing the industrially-inclined metal steps winding up the base of the antenna, we encounter a strange looking box with a multitude of brass fittings, pneumatic tubes and electrical wires coming out. this is the cryogenic cooling system, patiently awaiting its return to duty as its larger-than-life master undergoes a makeover. i am told the cooler temperatures reduce the amount of radio interference the dish will detect and generate. this is particularly important as the typical radio detection is tens to hundreds of times fainter than a typical cell-phone signal.

leaving the cold sentry to its duty, we continue up the stairway, passing beneath the grease-tinged dish moving mechanism, eventually reaching the electronics room. i am utterly surprised. when seeing an image of one of these dishes, one never imagines they contain full rooms within the base-structure, chock-full of ultra-specialized electronics. the scale of this thing is just incredible.

the tour comes to a peak when we climb up into to the dish itself. i can't explain why this is such an exciting affair, but it is. perhaps it is the novelty of it; perhaps it is that we are bathing in the radio waves of some far-off land; or perhaps it is simply the amazing photo-op we know we are about to get. nevertheless, i am fortunate enough to have a well-connected and very well-liked supervisor to catalyze something like this. walking around like little boys first discovering a hidden tree-fort, we check out our new perch from every possible angle and frantically take pictures like desperate tourists atop the eiffel tower. my flip-flops don't hold up very well on the slippery slope, but i still manage to get up the edge of the dish and experience something i will likely never forget: a vista of the entire array with the beautiful new-mexico desert as a backdrop, standing inside one of the dishes!

leaving our lookout, we come back to earth to witness a giant in slumber. one of the antennae is in the repair hanger, which is used for longer-term upgrades and repairs. again, it's the scale of the thing that makes my jaw drop. next to it lies the mule that the giant relies on, a huge, diesel powered, specialized machine used to move the antennae along the train tracks. shown to the right is the machine (orange thingy), next to the massive hanger. note the size of the door in the lower left corner!

next on the tour is the backup electrical generator. bob leads us into a cramped building dominated by two massive diesel engines. when the VLA experiences brown or blackouts (which it apparently does often), these bad-boys can power the entire facility for over a day with the fuel reserves they have on site. quite intimidating.

the final stop on the tour brings us into the control room and surrounding rooms. sean is of course treated like royalty once we enter, one of the benefits he gets for building a supercomputer for the VLA. this allows us to explore a nefarious web of broken-down computers that entangles the facility, gently mixed in with their much, much more advanced descendants. in fact, the first thing we see is a room full of banks of old computers with dials and switches that made me feel like i was in an apollo capsule. it takes every ounce of will-power to not start flipping random switches and taking off panels to look inside; the past is right before me and my curiosity grows into a swell. musing aloud, i discuss the possibility of turning the room of computers into an mp3 player. some mild defensiveness creeps into our guide's voice, my cue to stop. these old computers are what made the radio astronomy buzz and whir back in the 80's. without them, many great science projects would not have been completed. of course, the dinosaurs once ruled the earth, a fact that did not save them from extinction.

the contrast is enhanced even further when we are shown the new clean room, destined to house the WIDAR corellator, the previously referenced supercomputer DRAO is building for the VLA. sterile and brightly lit like an operating theatre, a man greets us at the door in full scrubs, booties and a hair-net. my imagination yearns to see an alien through the door, perhaps with 5-10 more people in scrubs surrounding it, running any number of diagnostic tests, dissecting every part of the thing. but my imagination is disappointed, as it usually is. sean seems to know this man though, so if there are any aliens, sean will eventually let the secret slip. the "disappointing" reality is still pretty cool, as racks and racks of equipment are already being installed in the clean room, and that's without the actual computer itself being there yet!

as the desert heat begins to get to sean and i, our tour peters out with a stop at the gift shop where we pick up trinkets and pieces of paper verifying our visit to this grand facility. the laziness that begins to take hold translates into sitting around in bob's office drinking warm, acidic diet grapefruit soda. mmmm....

next up, rock climbing in the desert.