THE VERY LONG-BASE-LINE ARRAY

The Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) consists of ten high-performance antennas and a 20-station correlator. The 25-m-diameter reflector antennas are located geographically to optimize spatial frequency coverage for high-quality imaging using VLBI techniques. The antennas are equipped with receivers for nine frequency bands over the range 300 MHz to 45 GHz. A wideband, high-density, recording system allows unattended operation at a sustained data rate of 128 Mb/s for a day, and peak rates of up to 512 Mb/s. The antennas operate unattended most of the time, and are controlled by a single operator in the Array Operations Center (AOC) at Socorro, NM. The correlator, located in the AOC, supports processing of all observations with the array.