The Allen Telescope Array (ATA), named after its main funder, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, was kickstarted near the town of Hat Creek, just north of Lassen Volcanic National Park in the remote northeast corner of California. The initial 42 antennas of the Allen Telescope Array have started receiving electromagnetic radiation from space, with more than 300 to join them in the following years.

The Allen array is run by the SETI Institute and the Radio Astronomy Laboratory from the University of California, Berkeley. Its first test task was to make radio maps of the Andromeda Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy, which the device did with surprising accuracy. Reportedly, the array already rivals much larger counterparts.

"For SETI, the ATA's technical capabilities exponentially increase our ability to search for intelligent signals, and may lead to the discovery of thinking beings elsewhere in the universe," said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in an official statement.

Each of the Allen Telescope Array's dishes is 6 meters across and is actually a mass produced dish (vs. the traditional custom, hand-built dishes in other radio telescopes). The other parts are off-the-shelf also, which means they are several times cheaper to build. The signals from each of the dishes are combined through special state-of-the-art equipment to produce a single image. The signals are amplified, filtered and then processed through special software.

There are low-noise amplifiers in each dish. These high-tech devices are cooled down to about 50 degrees Kelvin so they don't add noise to the space signals. After the amplifier, the signals are converted into optical signals to enable flawless transportation to the labs, where they are converted back to microwave signals and digitized. Once they are converted to digital format, they can be analyzed by specialized software, stored etc.

Steve Allen has provided SETI and Berkeley a $25 million grant to fund the initial construction work on the instrument. Other sponsors are being sought for the other $25 million needed to complete the project, which was started in 2001.

"This project represents a potential breakthrough in building large arrays of radio telescopes that are extremely cost effective," said Paul G. Allen, ATA's primary funder.

While the new instrument will search for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence, it will also provide a better understanding of supernovas (which are exploding stars), black holes, and other types of exotic astronomical objects that are predicted but not yet observed or very rarely observed. As far as SETI is concerned, For SETI, over the next two-dozen-years the ATA will get 1,000 times more data than has been accumulated in the past 45 years.

The full Allen array would be able to detect a signal from as far as 500 light years away.