Andrew Yee[_1_]
March 25th 08, 02:28 AM
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
P.O. Box O
Socorro, NM 87801
http://www.nrao.edu
Contact:
Dave Finley, Public Information Officer
(575) 835-7302
EMBARGOED For Release: 2:00 p.m. EST, Monday, Feb. 18, 2008
Very Large Array Retooling for 21st-Century Science
An international project to make the world's most productive ground-based
telescope 10 times more capable has reached its halfway mark and is on
schedule to provide astronomers with an extremely powerful new tool for
exploring the Universe. The National Science Foundation's Very Large Array
(VLA) radio telescope now has half of its giant, 230-ton dish antennas
converted to use new, state-of-the-art digital electronics to replace analog
equipment that has served since the facility's construction during the
1970s.
"We're taking a facility that has made landmark discoveries in astronomy for
three decades and making it 10 times more powerful, at a cost that's a
fraction of its total value, by replacing outdated technology with modern
equipment," said Mark McKinnon, project manager for the Expanded VLA (EVLA).
Rick Perley, EVLA project scientist, added: "When completed in 2012, the
EVLA will be 10 times more sensitive, cover more frequencies, and provide
far greater analysis capabilities than the current VLA. In addition, it will
be much simpler to use, making its power available to a wider range of
scientists."
The EVLA will give scientists new power and flexibility to meet the numerous
challenges of 21st-Century astrophysics. The increased sensitivity will
reveal the earliest epochs of galaxy formation, back to within a billion
years of the Big Bang, or 93 percent of the look-back time to the beginning
of the Universe. It will have the resolution to peer deep into the dustiest
star-forming clouds, imaging protoplanetary disks around young stars on
scales approaching that of the formation of terrestrial planets. The EVLA
will provide unique capabilities to study magnetic fields in the Universe,
to image regions near massive black holes, and to systematically track
changes in transient objects such as supernovae and fast-moving jets from
massive, compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes.
Authorized by Congress in 1972, the VLA was constructed during the 1970s and
dedicated in 1980. Astronomers began using it for research even before its
completion. To date, nearly 2,500 scientists from around the world have used
the VLA for more than 13,000 observing projects. More than 200 Ph.D
dissertations have been based on data obtained from VLA observations. The
VLA's discoveries have ranged from finding water ice on Mercury, the closest
planet to the Sun, to revealing details of the complex region surrounding
the black hole at the core of our own Milky Way Galaxy, to providing
surprising evidence that a distant galaxy had already formed and produced
stars prolifically less than a billion years after the Big Bang.
Half, or fourteen, of the VLA's inventory of 28, 25-meter-diameter dish
antennas now have been converted to the new, digital configuration. The
antennas collect faint radio waves emitted by celestial objects. Data from
all the antennas are brought to a central, special-purpose computing
machine, called a correlator, to be combined into a form that allows
scientists to produce detailed, high-quality images of the astronomical
objects under investigation.
This entire system for collecting, transmitting and analyzing the cosmic
radio signals is being replaced for the EVLA. New, more sensitive radio
receivers will cover the entire frequency range of 1-50 GHz. A 1970s-era
waveguide system gives way to a modern, fiber-optic system that dramatically
increases the amount of data that can be delivered from the antenna to the
correlator. Finally, a new, state-of-the-art correlator -- a special-purpose
supercomputer -- is being built by Canadian scientists and engineers. This
correlator will easily handle the increased data flow, offers much greater
observing flexibility, and provides vastly expanded capabilities for
analyzing the data to gain scientific insight about the astronomical
objects.
"We're leapfrogging several generations of technological progress to make
the EVLA a completely modern, 21st-Century scientific facility," said Fred
K.Y. Lo, NRAO Director.
Construction work on the EVLA began in 2001. The project costs $93.75
million in U.S. dollars -- $58.7 million in new direct funding from the
National Science Foundation, $1.75 million from Mexico, $17 million from
Canada in the form of the new correlator, and $16.3 million in the form of
labor from existing staff at the NRAO. The current value of the VLA
infrastructure on which the EVLA is being built is estimated at $300
million.
"The EVLA project is giving us 10 times the VLA's capability at one-third
the cost of the current facility," McKinnon pointed out.
To provide the improved scientific capabilities, the EVLA will boast some
impressive technical feats. For example, the fiber-optic data transmission
system will carry as much information instantaneously as the entire current
U.S. internet. The EVLA receiving system will be so sensitive that it could
detect the weak radio transmission from a cell phone at the distance of
Jupiter -- half a billion miles away.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National
Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated
Universities, Inc.
[NOTE: An image supporting this release is available at
http://www.nrao.edu/imagegallery/php/level3.php?id=337 ]
P.O. Box O
Socorro, NM 87801
http://www.nrao.edu
Contact:
Dave Finley, Public Information Officer
(575) 835-7302
EMBARGOED For Release: 2:00 p.m. EST, Monday, Feb. 18, 2008
Very Large Array Retooling for 21st-Century Science
An international project to make the world's most productive ground-based
telescope 10 times more capable has reached its halfway mark and is on
schedule to provide astronomers with an extremely powerful new tool for
exploring the Universe. The National Science Foundation's Very Large Array
(VLA) radio telescope now has half of its giant, 230-ton dish antennas
converted to use new, state-of-the-art digital electronics to replace analog
equipment that has served since the facility's construction during the
1970s.
"We're taking a facility that has made landmark discoveries in astronomy for
three decades and making it 10 times more powerful, at a cost that's a
fraction of its total value, by replacing outdated technology with modern
equipment," said Mark McKinnon, project manager for the Expanded VLA (EVLA).
Rick Perley, EVLA project scientist, added: "When completed in 2012, the
EVLA will be 10 times more sensitive, cover more frequencies, and provide
far greater analysis capabilities than the current VLA. In addition, it will
be much simpler to use, making its power available to a wider range of
scientists."
The EVLA will give scientists new power and flexibility to meet the numerous
challenges of 21st-Century astrophysics. The increased sensitivity will
reveal the earliest epochs of galaxy formation, back to within a billion
years of the Big Bang, or 93 percent of the look-back time to the beginning
of the Universe. It will have the resolution to peer deep into the dustiest
star-forming clouds, imaging protoplanetary disks around young stars on
scales approaching that of the formation of terrestrial planets. The EVLA
will provide unique capabilities to study magnetic fields in the Universe,
to image regions near massive black holes, and to systematically track
changes in transient objects such as supernovae and fast-moving jets from
massive, compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes.
Authorized by Congress in 1972, the VLA was constructed during the 1970s and
dedicated in 1980. Astronomers began using it for research even before its
completion. To date, nearly 2,500 scientists from around the world have used
the VLA for more than 13,000 observing projects. More than 200 Ph.D
dissertations have been based on data obtained from VLA observations. The
VLA's discoveries have ranged from finding water ice on Mercury, the closest
planet to the Sun, to revealing details of the complex region surrounding
the black hole at the core of our own Milky Way Galaxy, to providing
surprising evidence that a distant galaxy had already formed and produced
stars prolifically less than a billion years after the Big Bang.
Half, or fourteen, of the VLA's inventory of 28, 25-meter-diameter dish
antennas now have been converted to the new, digital configuration. The
antennas collect faint radio waves emitted by celestial objects. Data from
all the antennas are brought to a central, special-purpose computing
machine, called a correlator, to be combined into a form that allows
scientists to produce detailed, high-quality images of the astronomical
objects under investigation.
This entire system for collecting, transmitting and analyzing the cosmic
radio signals is being replaced for the EVLA. New, more sensitive radio
receivers will cover the entire frequency range of 1-50 GHz. A 1970s-era
waveguide system gives way to a modern, fiber-optic system that dramatically
increases the amount of data that can be delivered from the antenna to the
correlator. Finally, a new, state-of-the-art correlator -- a special-purpose
supercomputer -- is being built by Canadian scientists and engineers. This
correlator will easily handle the increased data flow, offers much greater
observing flexibility, and provides vastly expanded capabilities for
analyzing the data to gain scientific insight about the astronomical
objects.
"We're leapfrogging several generations of technological progress to make
the EVLA a completely modern, 21st-Century scientific facility," said Fred
K.Y. Lo, NRAO Director.
Construction work on the EVLA began in 2001. The project costs $93.75
million in U.S. dollars -- $58.7 million in new direct funding from the
National Science Foundation, $1.75 million from Mexico, $17 million from
Canada in the form of the new correlator, and $16.3 million in the form of
labor from existing staff at the NRAO. The current value of the VLA
infrastructure on which the EVLA is being built is estimated at $300
million.
"The EVLA project is giving us 10 times the VLA's capability at one-third
the cost of the current facility," McKinnon pointed out.
To provide the improved scientific capabilities, the EVLA will boast some
impressive technical feats. For example, the fiber-optic data transmission
system will carry as much information instantaneously as the entire current
U.S. internet. The EVLA receiving system will be so sensitive that it could
detect the weak radio transmission from a cell phone at the distance of
Jupiter -- half a billion miles away.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National
Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated
Universities, Inc.
[NOTE: An image supporting this release is available at
http://www.nrao.edu/imagegallery/php/level3.php?id=337 ]