The Very Large Array in New Mexico

Astronomical highlight #3 of our Route 66 road trip was a visit to the Very Large Array (VLA) telescope in Socorro, New Mexico. Okay, this was really far from Route 66 and well off the beaten path, but you can't drive past a sign for it and ignore it! It was very interesting - 27 dishes in all. It was superb fun to stand under a dish and watch it track and recalibrate every now and then. A lot of interesting work gets performed here, including research into quasars. While the site was used for the "Contact" movie, they state they don't do any SETI work. Interesting... ;-)