Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) is a radio astronomy observatory located near Big Pine, California (US) 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 (Caltech). The Owens Valley Solar Array portion of the observatory has been operated by New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) 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 (OVRO), one of the largest university-operated radio observatories in the world, has its origins in the late 1940s with three individuals: Lee DuBridge, president of California Institute of Technology (Caltech); 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 consisted of six dishes (also called Leighton's dishes). The millimeter array dishes become part of CARMA when that array was commissioned.
OVRO has used its telescopes and other instruments (listed below) to improve on the locations of radio sources in the sky, to study hydrogen clouds within the Milky Way, galaxy formation, active galactic nuclei ("blazars"), fast radio bursts, and other radioastronomical phenomena.
- An expanded, 110-element DSA-110 is currently used to study fast radio bursts. It was commissioned in 2023 with 100 operational dishes.