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Comment by JoeDaDude | Hacker News Reader

In the same day, the Very Large Array has its open house. So get to Trinity as early as possible (warning: crowds), see as much as you can, and then head 80 miles west to see the VLA. When I went, the guided tours were given by the Chief Scientist himself!

https://public.nrao.edu/event/vla-spring-open-house-2/2019-0...

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One of the fascinating parts of VLA is they allocate observing time in 5 minute chunks. When the next time comes, all 27 dishes move in unison to the observing region. Its is like a living creature.

I wouldn’t imagine that every five minutes is allotted to a different observation? If that were the case the duty cycle would be terrible because the dishes would spend an inordinate about of time moving.

I could be wrong? Perhaps they’re very fast?

I understood it as such that every observation uses integral multiples of five-minute intervals.

They don't change the configuration every 5 minutes and often times you reserve multiple blocks but the dishes are always moving anyway to track whatever its they're looking at.

they only pick them up and move them 4 times a year.

That alone would be worth a trip out for, with recent research about the first composite image of a black hole [0] to be released next week.

[0] https://www.space.com/event-horizon-telescope-black-hole-ann...

And if you are driving all around NM for atomic turism anyway, you might as well hit the Nuclear Museum in Albuquerque and the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos.

Thanks for the heads up! I'm camping close to White Sands and now have a fun thing to do this weekend.

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