Photograph of the largest radio telescope on the earth

The radio telescope of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has the diameter of 305 meters and is the largest radio telescope in the world. It is deeply involved with extraterrestrial intelligent life form exploration, and in 1974 it was said that a message was sent to M13.


Details are as below. Aresibo Observatory seen from the sky.
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The receiver is hanging. The underlying giant reflector can not be moved, but this hung receiver can be moved.
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Receiver up. This receiver weighs about 900 tons and is hung at a height of 150 meters above the ground with 18 cables.
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A steel tower that supports the receiver.
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You can also see clearly from the Google map. You can see that it is quite large.

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Arecibo Observatory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Spherical reflecting surface with a diameter of 305 m is made by using the recess of karst topography, and the fixed type antenna is hanging the receiver to 150 m height with 3 masts. It can also be used as a radar, it is also used for observation of asteroids and others.

Relationship with extraterrestrial intelligent life form exploration was deep, and in 1974M13A message was sent (Arecibo · Message). It has been done since 1999SETI @ homeAnalysis of the radio wave data received at the Arecibo Observatory is being carried out.

In the Cold War era, there seems to have been used to receive radio waves from the Soviet Union that reflected the moon.

There were also many important discoveries from the historical point, discovered that the rotation cycle of Mercury was 59 days in 1964, discovered the first binary pulsar PSR B 1913 + 16 in 1974, etc. It is.

In addition, it seems that it will be closed in 2011 unless it is possible to create maintenance costs of 8 million to 10 million dollars (about 910 million to 1,140 million yen) annually. It is a waste just for famous places that came out in movies "Contact" and "007 Golden Eye" ....