Latest Very Large Array Stories

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online For the first time, astronomers have identified discrete sources that account for nearly all of the radio waves coming from distant galaxies. This was achieved by more than 50 hours of observations with the ultra-sensitive Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). The researchers found that approximately 63 percent of the background radio emission comes from galaxies with gorging black holes at their cores. The remaining 37 percent...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomers say they have discovered a star factory in a galaxy so distant that they see it when the Universe was only six percent of its current age of about 13.7 billion years old. The team wrote in the journal Nature that HFLS3 sits at about 12.8 billion light-years from Earth. They said the distant galaxy is producing about 3,000 Suns per year, which is more than 2,000 times that of our own Milky Way galaxy. "This is the most...

Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The world was on edge earlier this month when North Korea detonated an underground nuclear explosion (UNE) meant to showcase to the world community the abilities of this beleaguered nation. In a recent story published in The Guardian, reports surfaced North Korea is planning two additional nuclear tests just this year. UNEs were once commonplace, giving the testing nation the knowledge surrounding their nuclear capability. The US...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online On February 15, astronomers will have an exciting opportunity with a record-setting close approach of an asteroid.  The research team, using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and NASA telescopes, will gain a key clue that will help predict the future of this natural cosmic orbiter. Discovered just a year ago, the 150-foot-wide asteroid, called 2012 DA14, will pass only 17,200 miles from the Earth on Friday, which is...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online It has taken more than a decade of design and construction, but North America has finally delivered the last of 25 antenna dishes, marking an important milestone in the construction of an observatory astronomers are using to open up a "final frontier" of the spectrum of visible light to exploration. The dishes are 12-meters in diameter, and comprise the North American share of antennas for the international ALMA telescope. Stretching...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A surprising black hole discovery made while using the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) is causing scientists to change what they know of globular star clusters. Astronomers used VLA to study the globular cluster known as Messier 22, which is a tight-knit collection of hundreds of thousands of stars that lie 10,000 light-years away from Earth. The team had hoped to find evidence for a rare type of...

ALMA and Jansky VLA enabling forefront research at frontiers of astrophysics Two new and powerful research tools are helping astronomers gain key insights needed to transform our understanding of important processes across the breadth of astrophysics. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), and the newly-expanded Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) offer scientists vastly improved and unprecedented capabilities for frontier research. The cutting-edge research enabled...

[ Watch the Video ] Using observations from NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite and the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio telescope, an international team of astronomers has identified the moment when a black hole in our galaxy launched super-fast knots of gas into space. Racing outward at about one-quarter the speed of light, these "bullets" of ionized gas are thought to arise from a region located just outside the black hole's...

Early results from dramatically upgraded telescope show breadth of scientific impactA 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...

Why sunspots are a strong source of radio emissions and what information those emissions carry will be the focus of an invited talk by NJIT Research Professor Jeongwoo Lee tomorrow at the International Astronomical Union Symposium on the Physics of Sun and Star Spots in Ventura, CA. The event numbers among the top gatherings in the U.S. for people studying sunspots and related phenomena.Lee, who will speak today, Aug. 26, 2010, will highlight Owens Valley Solar Array (OVSA), one of the two...