Vacation

The Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico is a complex of 27 huge radio telescopes that can be moved around to create a pseudo antenna of up to 20 miles or more across – but by amazing luck, on our visit all the antennas were clustered together, giving excellent views! Rail tracks extend from the center out on three axes, and a machine can pick up and move the antennas as needed. Once in place all the antennas can be rotated together to point to a particular part of the sky (and we luckily saw them rotating too!)

From the road, and the sign to VLA, there’s still 50 miles to go (it’s a long way from anywhere, to minimize radio pick-up from towns, etc); located where it’s flat – perfect for a radio telescope array!

It’s hard to tell in the pictures above. just how many antennas there are – some are lined up along one of the rail track axes. It’s also hard to tell just how big everything is; but these pics might help:

 

While we were walking around the tour, all the antennas rotated – very cool! You can see “before” and “after” in the last two pictures …

An epic day!

Back in 2006 during the original MINI Takes The States, I drove to the top of Sandia Crest near Albuquerque, and enjoyed spectacular views – so this time Margaret & I drove up together (a quite exciting road to get there!), and the views are all still there. The winding road takes you up 5,000ft above Albuquerque – 10,650ft above sea level!

The Humming birds almost totally ignored us standing just a foot or two away, and were much more impressive than those of yesterday! And yes, I have more Hummingbird video too …

 

During our drive in New Mexico, we finally got far enough East to reach the Continental Divide – an imaginary line down the USA where, to the West all rain eventually reaches the Pacific Ocean (ie: rivers flow west), while to the East, all rain eventually reaches the Atlantic Ocean (maybe via the Gulf – rivers flow south and east)! Nothing special, but there is a plaque on the roadside …

Here’s some more pics from our more-than 450 miles drive, from north of Durango to Socorro (with side trips to Sandia Crest and the VLA); as you see, New Mexico is much flatter than Colorado!