VERY LARGE ! ! !

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 - a date which will live in infunny: intern and acting associate minister for the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, Carmen, was given the task of driving to Socorro, NM to make a personal appearance at the branch congregation there. Of course, she took me, her navigator / photographer / purse watcher along to navigate, photograph and watch. The senior minister told her to be sure to see "THE VERY LARGE ARRAY" at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory while in the neighborhood.

We were both kind of excited at the prospect. We'd seen the movie Contact, with the radio telescopes looking like satellite dishes spread across the New Mexico desert. Carmen told her friend Karen, "There are hundreds and hundreds of these huge dishes spread across acres and acres of desert!" We left Albuquerque early enough to drive 70 miles, find the church, eat breakfast and go see the Array, with plenty of time to return to Socorro for the 4:00pm service (they rent space at an Episcopal Church, and those folks are out of the way by 3:30.)

The trip down was unremarkable with the exception that it was very windy. We gassed up before we set out for an hour and a quarter of driving in light traffic. Our directions took us right to the church, we ate breakfast at a nearby Denny's and got ready to head west to THE ARRAY. The camera was ready. I pulled out the GPS to input our destination. I typed in Very Large Array - she never heard of it. I typed in National Radio Astronomy Observatory - she never heard of it. I tried VLA (as it was called on a few signs) and NRAO (on a few more) with no luck. It appeared we were stuck with my Rand McNally Road Atlas for navigation - how twentieth century!!!

As a tribute to my theory that computers are making us stupid, we made a wrong turn and ended up going fifteen miles out of our way before we found the right road out of Socorro (the big city!) The first sign we saw said "VLA - 44 Miles" It didn't say that it was uphill all the way. I don't know how much elevation we gained on that drive, but I do know that we used nearly a half tank of gas going up there. The surrounding mountains were gorgeous, even when they were partially obscured by clouds of dust stirred up by the spring winds. There was a tiny little sign with an arrow pointing south off of Route 60 to VLA. It was a tiny little road, hardly adequate to handle the millions of visitors they would get if it were locatable by GPS.

Far off in the distance we could see about ten dishes sitting out in the middle of nothing. "That isn't the Very Large Array," Carmen said questioningly. "Oh no," I replied. "It must be just a few to whet your appetite for the immense spectacle that awaits beyond." We drove and drove, made a right turn onto the property of the observatory and headed for the Visitor's Center. Carmen stayed in the car while I went inside to find out what we had to do, where we had to go to see the Array. There was a little display with post cards and maps of the walking tour for 25 cents each and a slot to drop your quarters into. I did a little reading: "The VLA consists of 27 dish-shaped antennas that are connected together to form a single large radio telescope..."

"See that Array over there?" I said, pointing to the ten. "That's as Very Large as it gets. Yes, they're spread out over many square miles, but there are only twenty seven of them. I guess we saw pictures of large clusters of dishes, heard about hundreds of square miles, and assumed the rest." "Well, the church is paying mileage for me to drive my sorry butt all the way up here for this!" she said. We realized as we left that the terms "Very Large Array" and "Very Large" anything would thenceforth mean a great expectation followed by a puny reality.

The good news: gas consumption was much less on the way back down to Socorro.