The Long Wavelength Array Now under development, with stations eventually to be distributed over the state of New Mexico, this multipurpose telescope is expected to provide improved angular resolution and sensitivity at frequencies below 88 MHz.

The Long Wavelength Array (LWA) will be a new multipurpose radio telescope operating in the frequency range 10-88 MHz. Upon completion, the LWA will consist of 53 phased array Bstations( distributed over a region about 400 km in diameter in the state of New Mexico. Each station will consist of 256pairsofdipole-typeantennaswhosesignalsareformedinto beams, with outputs transported to a central location for high- resolution aperture synthesis imaging. The resulting image sensitivity is estimated to be a few millijanskys (5� ,8M Hz, two polarizations, 1 h, zenith) in 20-80 MHz; with resolution and field of view of (800 ,8 � )a nd (2 00 ,2 � ) at 20 and 80 MHz, respec- tively. Notable engineering features of the instrument, demon- strated in this paper, include Galactic-noise limited active antennas and direct sampling digitization of the entire tuning range. This paper also summarizes the LWA science goals, spe- cifications, and analysis leading to top-level design decisions.