Radio Astronomy

Stars and galaxies emit lots of electromagnetic radiation, not just visible. This is a radio image of a galaxy. We can't see radio waves but we can detect them and a computer can produce a visible image for us.

Because radio waves have very big wavelengths they are useful for looking at large scale structures.

Lots of radio telescopes can be linked together to look at the same thing. This is the VLA (very large array) in New Mexico. It consists of 27 large radio telescopes.

Here is a summary of the different wavelengths that can be used in astronomy.