An Astronomer's Meadow of Dreams

A modern fresh radio telescope array under building in central New Mexico will finally harness the power of more than 13,000 antennas and offer a fresh eye to the sky. The antennas, which look like droopy ceiling fans, form the Long Wavelength Array, intended to survey the sky from horizon to horizon over a wide range of frequencies.

The University of New Mexico leads the project, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., provides the sophisticated digital electronic systems, which stand for a major part of the observatory.

The first station in the Long Wavelength Array, with 256 antennas, is planned to start surveying the sky by this summer. When complete, the Long Wavelength Array will consist of 53 stations, with a total of 13,000 antennas tactically placed in an area nearly 400 kilometers (248 miles) in diameter. The antennas will give responsive, high-resolution images of a region of the sky hundreds of times larger than the full moon.