Arecibo Obervatory
The World's Largest Single Aperture Telescope!
General Information
-The Arecibo Telescope is located in Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
- Used in 3 Major areas of research, Radio Astronomy, Eronomy, and Radar Astronomy.
- The Telescope is a spherical reflector which bounces radio waves.
- One single dish. (1,000 ft in diameter, and 790,000 square feet.)
Pictures of The Arecibo Obervatory
Arecibo Telescope
Air view of Arecibo
4769 Castalia
The first directly imaged asteroid
Major Discoveries
- In 1964 the telescope determined the rotation of Venus was just 59 days, as opposed to 89 days.
- The discovery of the periodicity of the Crab Pulsar (33 milliseconds) by Covalence and others provided the first solid evidence that neutron stars exist.
- In August 1989, the Observatory directly imaged an asteroid for the first time in history. (4769 Castalia.)
The Observatory
- The Arecibo observatory is located in the karst terrain at high elevation. It is also located close to the equator, so more of the sky can be seen.
-the waves are concentrated into the receiver then transmitted into the CCD
-the observatory was completed in 1963 by Cornell University