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Published: July 27th 2008
On this overcast day, we headed out into the desert to see the Very Large Array of radio telescopes used to search the skies. This is the same array featured in the movie contact with Jodie Foster. It's a set of 27 radio antenna that are arranged in 3 branches of 9. When spread out, each arm can spread 13 miles.
A rather reluctant PhD student took us out and answered all of our questions. It was really impressive to see these massive things, built decades ago, that we're still using. They're just now getting updated with new computers and systems so they were all clustered near the visitor's center. When they move, it's quite unsetlling.
After a couple hours there, we headed back to Soccoro to resume our trip west. We stopped at the same cute microbrew for lunch as we did for dinner the night before and then started our 400 mile trek to Green Valley, AZ. This was a long day of driving - the clouds helped keep the views interesting but we made a few odd stops to break up the trip.
We attempted to visit Stein - an old ghost town - but
they were closed. We did stop to see "The Thing" - a roadside attraction advertized for 100's of miles in advance. We even paid the $1.00 each to go in.
By the time we got to Green Valley, it was dark so we had no idea what it looked like until morning.
And what would a road trip, with a radar detector after visitings large radar antenna, be without pondering the meaning of the different bands of radar?
L - Long-range surveillance, enroute traffic control
S - Moderate-range surveillance, terminal traffic control, long-range weather
C - Long-range tracking, airborne weather
X - Short-range tracking, missile guidance, mapping, marine radar, airborne intercept
K - High resolution mapping, satellite altimetry, airport surveillance
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