Okay, I was kind of expecting it, but it still blew me away. The VLA stands for Very Large Array. It was the first and remains one of the very few telescopes of its kind. In technical terms, the VLA captures centimeter-wavelength waves meaning that the apparatus operates differently to the telescopes that capture visible light that humans have adapted to see. The frequencies that the VLA capture are much longer than the frequencies of visible light, making the large, 26-mile potential diameter of antennae the best way to capture these wavelengths. The bonuses of being 50 miles from the nearest notable town and housed at a plateau that sits just under 7000 feet above sea level make for the ideal conditions for monitoring radio waves that we have on Earth. The signals from the 27 antennae are added together to form a single cohesive image that gives far more information than a single antenna could provide.