17 Facts about the Arecibo Observatory

The observatory viewed from the Air.

The Arecibo Observatory is a radio telescope in the municipality of Arecibo, Puerto Rico, USA. This observatory is operated by SRI International, USRA and UMET, under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation (NSF).[2][3] This observatory is also called the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, although “NAIC” refers to both the observatory and the staff that operates it.

1. The telescope has made appearances in motion picture and television productions and got more recognition in 1999 when it began to collect data for the SETI@home project.
2. The main collecting dish is 1,000 ft (305 m) in diameter, constructed inside the depression left by a karst sinkhole.
3. The Arecibo Observatory contains the largest curved focusing dish on Earth, giving Arecibo the largest electromagnetic-wave-gathering capacity. From a scientific perspective  it is the sheer size of the reflector that makes the Arecibo Observatory special. It is the largest curved focusing antenna in the world, and therefore the world’s most sensitive radio telescope.
4. The Arecibo telescope was built between mid-1960 and November 1963, by William E. Gordon of Cornell University, who intended to use it to study Earth’s ionosphere.
5. On April 7, 1964, shortly after it began operations, Gordon Pettengill’s team used it to determine that the rotation rate of Mercury was not 88 days, as previously thought, but only 59 days.
6.  In 1968, the discovery of the periodicity of the Crab Pulsar (33 milliseconds) by Lovelace and others provided the first solid evidence that neutron stars exist.
7.  In 1974, Hulse and Taylor discovered the first binary pulsar PSR B1913+16,^[18] an accomplishment for which they later received the Nobel Prize in Physics.
8. In 1982, the first millisecond pulsar, PSR B1937+21, was discovered by Donald C. Backer, Shrinivas Kulkarni, Carl Heiles, Michael Davis, and Miller Goss. This object spins 642 times per second, and until the discovery of PSR J1748-2446ad in 2005, it was the fastest-spinning pulsar known.
9. In August 1989, the observatory directly imaged an asteroid for the first time in history: 4769 Castalia.
10. In 1990  Polish astronomer Aleksander Wolszczan made the discovery of pulsar PSR B1257+12, which later led him to discover its three orbiting planets and a possible comet. These were the first extra-solar planets discovered.
11. In 1994, John Harmon used the Arecibo radio telescope to map the distribution of ice in the poles of Mercury.
12. In 1974, the Arecibo message, an attempt to communicate with potential extraterrestrial life, was transmitted from the radio telescope toward the globular cluster M13, about 25,000 light-years away. According to SETI, the broadcast is roughly the same as a 20-trillion-watt omnidirectional broadcast. In simple terms, the broadcast would be visible by just about any receiver in the galaxy that is about the same size as the antenna at Arecibo.
13. The Arecibo Observatory was used as a filming location in the climax of the James Bond movie GoldenEye and as a level in the accompanying Nintendo 64 videogame GoldenEye 007.
14. The film Contact features Arecibo, where the main character uses the facility as part of a SETI project.
15. About 140 persons are employed by the Observatory providing everything from food to software in support of the operation. A scientific staff of about 16 divide their time between scientific research and assistance to visiting scientists. Engineers, computer experts, and technicians design and build new instrumentation and keep it in operation. A large maintenance staff keeps the telescope and associated instrumentation as well as the site in optimal condition. A staff of telescope operators support observing twenty four hour per day.
16. As a result of the resurfacing of the antenna, which was completed in 1974, observations are possible up to a frequency of 4,000 MHz.
17. The Arecibo Observatory is used for three main fields of research; Radio Astronomy, Atmospheric Science and Radar Astronomy.

Astronomers use the huge Arecibo Observatory, a radio telescope in Puerto Rico, to study the close flyby of Earth by asteroids.

CREDIT: Arecibo Observatory/NSF

By Ivan Petricevic Ancient-Code.com

Reference:

http://www.naic.edu / wikipedia.org / seti.org / space.com /

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