bild

View of several of the dish antennae which make up the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope near Socorro, New Mexico. The VLA is the world's largest radio telescope array, consisting of 27 dishes, each 25 metres in diameter. The dishes can be moved to various positions along the arms of a Y-shaped railway network. Two of the arms are 21 km in length, the third is 19 km. The data from all the dishes is combined to produce a single radio image, the 27 antennae effectively forming one giant radio dish. (KEYSTONE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/JOHN MEAD)