One of the world's most powerful radio telescopes has recently begun to scan the skies in the most extensive and detailed radio survey ever attempted of the deep space beyond our home galaxy. Over the next seven years, the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico is expected to find about 2 million new celestial radio sources and show a portion of those in especially fine detail. The survey will provide important information for understanding the evolution of galaxies and the structure of the universe, says UC Davis radio astronomer Robert Becker, who is leading one part of the two-part survey. Becker also works at the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Beginning early next year, the accumulating radio data will be distributed to university researchers and high school students on compact disks for a wide variety of studies. The unusual and unexpected objects found by the survey will capture most people's interest, Becker says.