 In 1987 and 1989 he led searches for the signal using the Harvard/Smithsonian META radio telescope at the Oak Ridge Observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts.In September 1995 and again in May 1996, Gray and Kevin B. Marvel reported searches for the signal using the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico (which is an array of 27 dishes simulating a single dish with a diameter of up to 22 miles), becoming the first amateur astronomer to use the VLA, and the first individual to use it to search for extraterrestrial signals.The VLA was, until the end of the twentieth century, the most powerful radio telescope ever built.