Rainbow over dishes of the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope at Socorro, New Mexico. The VLA is the world's largest radio telescope array, consis


Rainbow over dishes of the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope at Socorro, New Mexico. The VLA is the world's largest radio telescope array, consisting of 27 dish aerials each 25 metres in diameter which can move to various positions along the arms of a Y-shaped railway network. Here, the dishes are positioned unusually close together. The whole array effectively forms a giant radio dish 27 km in diameter. At its shortest observing wavelength of cm, it can resolve details arcseconds in scale - 10 times better than any Earth-based optical telescope.


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Photo credit: © DR DOUG JOHNSON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
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Keywords: array, astronomy, astrophysics, large, observatory, radio, rainbow, telescope, telescopes, vla