Owens Valley Radio Observatory


Owens Valley Radio Observatory is a radio astronomy observatory located near Big Pine, California in Owens Valley. It lies east of the Sierra Nevada, approximately north of Los Angeles and southeast of Bishop. It was established in 1956, and is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology. The Owens Valley Solar Array portion of the observatory has been operated by New Jersey Institute of Technology since 1997.
One of the ten dish-antenna radiotelescope systems of the Very Long Baseline Array is located on a sublease within the Owens Valley observatory.

About

The Owens Valley Radio Observatory, one of the largest university-operated radio observatory in the world, has its origins in the late 1940s with three individuals: Lee DuBridge, president of California Institute of Technology ; Robert Bacher, chairman of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy; and Jesse Greenstein, professor of astrophysics. In 1954, Caltech occupied a central position in the American radio astronomy program. John Bolton and Gordon Stanley, two respected Australian astronomers, joined the Caltech faculty in order to undertake the construction of large dishes. In 1956 the first radio telescope, a antenna, was erected on Palomar Mountain. It was dismantled in 1958 and transferred to the Owens Valley site. At the same time, two telescopes were completed. Ten years later, an even bigger antenna, a dish was finished. Over the period of 1985 to 1996, a millimeter-wave array was commissioned at OVRO. It consists of six dishes. The millimeter array dishes become part of CARMA when that array was commissioned.
OVRO has used its telescopes and other instruments to improve on the locations of radio sources in the sky, to study hydrogen clouds within the Milky Way, galaxy formation, active galactic nuclei, fast radio bursts, and other radioastronomical phenomena. This research is performed by the staff at the observatory with help from professors and post-doctoral students from many institutions. The observatory is different from other radio observatories because of its extensive work with graduate students, who can come to the observatory for long-term observation, benefiting not only the students, but also the observatory as it allows for more comprehensive projects to take place.

CARMA

OVRO staff took a large share of the responsibility for operating CARMA, which was located east of OVRO in the Inyo Mountains, but was decommissioned in 2015. CARMA was a collaboration between Caltech, University of California Berkeley, University of Illinois, University of Maryland, and University of Chicago to observe space at centimeter and millimeter wavelengths with a 23-element interferometer. CARMA used this interferometer to study the origins of planets, stars and galaxies, as well as to measure the distortions in the cosmic microwave background caused by clusters of galaxies formed soon after the Big Bang.

Instruments

In the film The Arrival, Zane Zaminsky and Calvin work at Owens Valley for the SETI Project and discover an alien signal.
In the film Contact, the Owens Valley 40-meter telescope is mentioned as the location where Dr. Eleanor Arroway did her thesis work.