VLA

[Rommie]

So I'm just letting y'all know, I'm scheduling my first ever VLA observations this week! The cycle technically started last week and runs to the end of the year, but I was too busy bc of the stupid corrections to get far in it. (I also need like 15 one hour chunks, which in the grand scheme of life is easy to schedule over coming months.) And it's not hard once you get the hang of it, you just look up what calibrator sources are nearby and the rise/set times of the source in Socorro, etc. And apparently the VLA folks will double check my scheduled observations before implementing them anyway before they're taken.

I mean, it's not quite how I imagined it would be from watching Contact as a teenager, but still pretty darn cool. Unfortunately you do not get to go to the VLA anymore to take your observations yourself, though I confess I have half a mind to buy a plane ticket and fly down there to see it happen once I know when I'm scheduled!

[Thumper]

Yeah, you should go down to check, just to make sure they didn't leave the lens cap on or something.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Yeah, you should go down to check, just to make sure they didn't leave the lens cap on or something.

Absolutely

[SciFiFisher]