The Updated VLA

A new and uniquely powerful tool for cutting-edge science is emerging on the crisp, high desert of western New Mexico. Outwardly, it looks much the same as the famed Very Large Array (VLA), a radio telescope that has spent more than three decades on the frontiers of astronomical research. The 27 white, 230-ton dish antennas still peer skyward, the 72 miles of railroad track still wait to transport the antennas across the arid plains, the familiar buildings remain, and crews still fan out across the desert to service the antennas.

Functionally, however, everything has changed. The VLA has become the Expanded VLA (EVLA).

"We have a completely new scientific instrument, with completely new capabilities, and it's enabling research that was impossible until now," said Chris Carilli, Chief Scientist of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). Carilli and Rick Perley, EVLA Project Scientist, outlined the capabilities and early accomplishments of the EVLA at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Boston, MA.

Carilli presented highlights of projects in which researchers from around the world made first use of some of the EVLA's new capabilities while those capabilities still are being tested.…