eVLBI: Networks bringing radio telescopes together

The angular resolution, or detail, that a telescope can achieve depends on the wavelength of the light and the diameter of the telescope. Given radio waves are up to a million times longer than optical light, radio telescopes would need diameters of many kilometers to have the same resolution as ground based optical telescopes. To overcome this limitation, interferometry is used where the signal from multiple, smaller, telescopes is combined and processed in a supercomputer to synthesize a telescope the size of the largest separation between the telescopes. Connected element interferometry is where the individual telescopes can be connected to the processing backend via waveguides, coax cables, optical fiber etc.