Watched “Contact” recently again on satellite.

Coincidentally also listened to “Little Atoms” interview with Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan’s widow, who helped write “Contact” and who said in the interview something about a planned reboot of “Cosmos.” Which would be cool, but which will possibly be disappointing. We’ll see.

“Contact” takes place at the VLA. I’ve told everyone who’ll listen to my spiel about it, usually after my spiel about Turkey and Istanbul, that the VLA is a remarkable place everyone should see.

We spent our time in New Mexico driving to and visiting ancient places, pueblos and missions of course, and we went to the VLA and got there very late in the afternoon. VLA buildings close to the public at 5 PM I believe, and as we turned on to the access road and approached the facility’s control buildings we could see tour buses and cars of staff coming towards us across the dry and dusty plain. When we got to the parking lot the dust from the vehicles leaving had settled, and we were the only ones at the VLA, except for a scientist (or maybe two) we eventually discovered after nosily peering into the windows and seeing them in the building.

There are 27 dishes (antenna). They are 82 feet wide. On the plain pointing up at the sky they look like flowers.

As we were the only ones outside there that late in the afternoon it was dead quiet, and every fifteen minutes or so we became aware of a low hum. It took us two turns to realize the dishes were repositioning, pointing in unison, at a different point in the sky. The hum was the hum of their motors. Our photos taken over the couple of hours we were at the VLA show their movement, crude time lapse style.

The antenna are moved to different points on the plain and into service buildings on the railroad tracks. That’s what you see here.

Leslie Wagner reminded me that Pie Town is just a little further west on Route 60. Another must-see place. We’ll have to go there too when we next visit.