Welcome to the Control Room of the VLA Operations
Center!
The Control Room of the array is located on the second floor of the
control building. This is what it looks like. The windows look out
at the array. If you were on the observation deck you would be looking
in through the windows. The antennas are not visible in this photo for the purpose of
balancing the light.
| Array Operator Larry Brothers spends much of his time at the
console or the operator log monitor. The Principal Investigator (PI)
of each observing team creates an observing file that tells the
computers that operate the antennas where to point, what frequency
to observe at, how long to observe, and any switching of sources
that might take place. The file will be sent over the Internet to
the array operator who will check it for errors and then put it into
the computer at the appropriate time. During the observation, the
computers tell the antennas what to do and the operator makes sure
nothing goes wrong. This means Larry must watch all the monitors
for errors or possible hazards (such as lightning), keep track of
problems in the operator log, watch for interference on the
oscilloscope, .....
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Modified on Friday, 26-Sep-2008 12:09:36 MDT
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National Radio
