May 14, 2015

Some antennas of the Owens Valley Long Wavelength Array (OV-LWA) with the center of the Milky Way in the background (Image courtesy Gregg Hallinan. All rights reserved)

A new radio telescope was recently activated in California, based at Caltech’s Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO). It’s the Owens Valley Long Wavelength Array (OV-LWA), a set of 256 small antennas developed by a consortium led by Caltech that includes NASA’s JPL, Harvard University, the University of New Mexico, Virginia Tech, and the Naval Research Laboratory. Its purpose is to observe the entire sky 24/7 at long radio wavelengths.