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February 27, 1998:
Hour Two: Sounds of the Stars:
Radio astronomy - and its more unusual applications.
| You've seen them in the movie Contact - but they're not all listening for alien life. Around the world, astronomers scan the skies with telescopes that look not at visible light, but at radio waves. And often, they get back information that is just as useful, if not more useful, than the information that visible-light-based telescopes can provide.
The Very Large Array is just that - a very large array of twenty seven radio antennas in the New Mexico desert. The antennas, mounted on railroad tracks for fine-tuning, are spread across the desert in a huge "Y" shape that covers an area over one and a half times the size of Washington, DC. | 
The Very Large Array in New Mexico.
(click for larger view)
(photo NRAO/Associated Universities, Inc) | | Using the VLA, scientists from around the world can listen to the faint radio signals emitted by distant stars or by far-flung space probes. Data from the VLA, once processed properly, can let astronomers see with resolution fine enough to spot a golf-ball-sized radio wave source over 150 kilometers away. It can image the radio signals of far-off galaxies, supernovae, and the like in great detail. | 
The Supernova Remnant Cas A
(click for larger view)
(photo NRAO/Associated Universities Inc) | Of course, the data from the VLA doesn't have to be used for traditional astronomy. The data is just a stream of numbers that, once processed, has many possibilities - even music. So tune your receivers well, and tune into an hour of radio astronomy - scientific and otherwise.
Guests:
David Finley
Public Information Officer
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Socorro, NM
Fiorella Terenzi
Author, "Heavenly Knowledge : An Astrophysicist Seeks Wisdom in the Stars"
Los Angeles, CA
F. Richard Moore
Professor of Music, Chair, Music Department
University of California at San Diego
San Diego, CA
Books/Articles Discussed:
Related Links:
The Very Large
Array - find radio astronomy basics
and a visitor's
guide to the VLA.
National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center
(the big dish at Arecibo)
Darksky - fighting against light
and radio wave pollution
Check out solar sounds from Stanford
SciFri's 8/8/97 broadcast on light and radio pollution (read about it) (listen in!)
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