November 29, 2006
The stars above are ancient, but your chance to be here is exquisitely temporary.
A Big Dish at the VLA Radio Observatory
Birthday · November 29, 2006
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published November 29, 2006. Credit: Victor Bobbett. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
They are so large, they are almost unreal. The radio dishes of the Very Large Array (VLA) of radio telescopes might appear to some as a strange combination of a dinosaur skeleton and common satellite-TV receiving dish. Together, the 27 dishes of the VLA combine high sensitivity with high resolution, enabling a series of important astronomical discoveries, including water ice on planet Mercury, micro-quasars in our Galaxy, gravitationally-induced Einstein rings around distant galaxies, and radio counterparts to cosmologically distant gamma-ray bursts. Pictured above, a dish from the VLA was photographed last week near Socorro, New Mexico, USA.
Image credit: Victor Bobbett