World’s Most Sensitive Radio Telescope Array Takes Shape in Nevada

A remote area in Nevada’s Great Basin is set to house the world’s most sensitive radio telescope array. The California Institute of Technology is leading the project and has announced the commencement of the construction of the telescope following successful funding. The project, named the Deep Synoptic Array, will include 1,650 radio dishes to explore supermassive black holes, pulsars, and fast radio bursts, which are intense bursts of radio waves originating from deep space.

Gregg Hallinan, a Caltech professor of astronomy and lead investigator for the Deep Synoptic Array, stated, “It’s the sheer number of antennas that makes this completely unique and unlike other existing telescopes.” Radio telescopes capture naturally occurring radio waves from stars, planets, galaxies, and other celestial objects. Astronomers analyze these signals to understand the structure, composition, and characteristics like temperature.

Unlike optical observatories, radio telescopes do not take photos. However, the collected radio signals can be transformed into data to create images. Hallinan emphasized that the Deep Synoptic Array will outmatch previous ground-based radio telescopes, scanning the sky 100 times faster and producing superior radio images.

“Every telescope that has been built in history — and that’s going back a century — combined has found about 20 million radio sources,” he said. “This telescope will double that in the first 24 hours.”

The dishes, each approximately 20 feet wide, will form a large radio telescope array covering more than 123 square miles in Nevada’s White Pine County, managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The project is now in the permitting stage, with construction planned to start next year and aim for completion by 2029.

Radio astronomy typically uses two kinds of telescopes: a large single dish, like the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, measuring 328 feet across, or a vast array of smaller dishes, like the Very Large Array in New Mexico with 27 dishes in a Y-shape. Single dishes offer high sensitivity to detect faint radio waves from deep space, whereas arrays with multiple dishes provide sharper images. Hallinan noted that the Deep Synoptic Array will accomplish both tasks effectively.

The array will capture radio emissions from millions of cosmic entities, including stars and galaxies. According to Vikram Ravi, another Caltech astronomy professor and co-investigator for the project, “Radio astronomy is about to go from sketch to photograph.” The array will frequently explore a vast universe volume, outperforming any other telescope in terms of area and frequency.

Researchers plan to utilize the array to conduct at least five surveys of the sky, seeking pulses of radio emissions for other observatories to further analyze. Hallinan stated, “We’ll be able to say precisely where in the sky we detected the radio source, and then all these other telescopes — optical, infrared, and X-ray observatories — can point there.”

The project is funded by Schmidt Sciences, a philanthropic organization established in 2024 by Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, and his wife, Wendy. Eric Schmidt also serves as CEO of Relativity Space, recently securing a NASA contract to deliver science instruments to Mars in 2028. As an initial step, two prototype dishes were constructed near Bishop, California, to demonstrate the technology.

To find the right location for the Deep Synoptic Array, Hallinan and his team explored sites across the western US, including California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. They needed remote areas far from radio frequency interference from devices like cellphones and Wi-Fi. Hallinan explained, “This telescope is sensitive enough to detect a cellphone as far away as the sun, so we need to try to get away from all that.”

The Great Basin’s natural features in Nevada provide a shield against such interference. Hallinan highlighted, “There are these quiet valleys that are very low in population. This location in White Pine County was by far the quietest that we found, and it was just incredibly well-suited for radio astronomy.”