The Very Large Array consists of 27 dishes arranged in a geometric pattern to make pictures from the radio waves emitted by astronomical objects. Each dish is roughly the diameter of a baseball field, and is mounted on a platform which resides on one of three railroad tracks radiating from a common center. The array can thus be expanded or contracted to collectively focus the gathering of electromagnetic information. The diameter of the array ranges from 26 miles in A configuration down to 0.8 miles in D configuration.

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