Very Large Array

We went to downtown Socorro to look around and mail our ballots. We walked the streets of the older area of town. Interesting place but Walmart's has killed most of the businesses.

We returned to camp and got ready to roll.


We headed West on Hwy 60 stopping at the Very Large Array site of the National Radio telescope Observatory. This is currently the largest radio telescope in the world. There are 27 each 84 foot dishes here that work in harmony like a very large dish used for radio telescope observations. we checked out the Visitor Center and took the walking tour of the site.


Each antenna weighs hundreds of tons. They're moved to various foundation locations along the tracks or into a service building. There are four sets of positions for the antenna that provide varying degrees of resolution. The red object on the right in the right picture above is a motorized platform that moves the antennas from place to place.

The antennas move on a pair of parallel railroad tracks that stretch 13 miles on each spoke of a wye. An interesting place.

We continued West stopping in Pietown, supposedly famous for its pies. We wouldn't know because they close at 3pm and we arrived at 4pm.

We stopped for the night at a rest spot (wide spot in road with a garbage can) because the sun was directly in our face. Nothing around here. We didn't have cell phone so we called Dawn using the VOIP phone via the Datastorm satellite system. Always in contact.