Arecibo Radio Telescope

Yesterday we talked about the James Webb. Today let's take a quick look at Arecibo Radio Telescope. No banana for scale, but the white outline here shows we are looking at. At 305m (1000 freedom units) this is the largest telescope dish in the world.

Nestled in the deep Puerto Rican jungle, the dish itself is operated in conjunction with the United States (major funding by NSF). 19 kilometers inland (12 freedom units) from the city of Arecibo, the dish has been in operation since 1963.

http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5652
http://www.naic.edu/fifty/index.shtml

Before I started reading about this telescope, all I knew was this bad ass telescope was in Goldeneye (my personal favorite Bond movie).

The above shows the opacity of the atmosphere to different types of radiation. I like this because it shows why certain spectrums are best suited for different locations.

The James Webb observes from 0.6 to 5 micrometer (0.00003 to 0.0008 freedom units) wavelengths. Because of the non-linear filtering of the atmosphere this observation is best in space. Arecibo collects in the 3.0 centimeter to 1.0m range (1.2 to 33 freedom units), which is less prone to disturbances from the atmosphere

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Scientific_instruments

Something that you may not be aware of is that the SETI@Home project was developed to process the radio data collected by Aricebo. I know I had this screensaver running for like 3 years straight.

Here is a copy of the "message" sent out to space by Arecibo. I'm not exactly sure how it is transmitted to look like that. But there you go!

The reason I picked this topic is because I was wondering "well what is the telescope doing now"? Well to be honest a lot less than in the past. Late last year the NSF put out a Dear Collegue Letter out to the scientific community to figure out the future of the radio considering a "substantial reduction in funding from the NSF".

I couldn't find a status about the future of Arecibo, but would love to hear from someone who knows and I can update the post!

http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2016/nsf16005/nsf16005.jsp