What's Galaxiki?Galaxiki is a science fiction galaxy created, maintained and owned by its Community. Membership is free - sign up now to become a "Galaxician" and start editing stars, planets and moons, or get your own personal solar system.
Your own solar systemYou may name and edit as many community stars and solar systems as you like. Would you like to get your own solar system that only you will be able to edit?
Solar system widget
 Use a solar system widget to display any Galaxiki solar system on your website or blog!
|
 |
Galaxiki Community BlogSubscribe via RSS Arecibo - The Largest Telescope Ever ConstructedMarch 18, 2008by joskirps The Arecibo Observatory operates the largest telescope ever constructed, using a 305m dish constructed inside the depression left by a karst sinkhole. The telescope is located about 9 miles (14 km) south-southwest from the town of Arecibo in Puerto Rico, although the observatory belongs to the United States and is operated by Cornell University under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The dish is the largest curved focusing dish on Earth, giving Arecibo the largest electromagnetic-wave gathering capacity. The receiver is located on a 900-ton platform which is suspended 150m in the air above the dish by 18 cables running from three reinforced concrete towers. <center>  </center>The platform has a 93 m long rotating bow-shaped track on which receiving antennas are mounted, this allows the telescope to observe any region of the sky. Puerto Rico's location near the equator allows Arecibo to view all of the planets in the solar system. Construction began in the summer of 1960, it started operating on November 1, 1963. Only a few months later, on April 7, 1964, it was used it to correctly determine the rotation rate of Mercury. In 1968 it confirmed the existence of neutron stars, in 1974 it discovered the first binary pulsar. In 1982, the first millisecond pulsar (spining 642 times per second) was detected by the Arecibo telescope, followed by the first directly imaged asteroid in 1989. The following year a pulsar with three orbiting planets was detected - these were the first extra-solar planets ever discovered. In 1994 the distribution of ice in the poles of Mercury was mapped and in January 2008 prebiotic molecules were reported after radio spectroscopy measurements of a distant starburst galaxy. Arecibo is also the source of data for the SETI@home distributed computing project and was used for the SETI Institute's Project Phoenix observations. In 1974, the Arecibo message, an attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life, was transmitted from the radio telescope. The Arecibo telescope could also be seen in the James Bond movie "Golden Eye" and in the film "Contact".
1 Comments - Read comments - Leave a comment Skip Tucker said, on March 18, 2008: How this sort of thing is NOT considered exciting to so many people is one of the greatest mysteries of life. |
 |
Happening right now
Sponsored LinksStatisticsMembers: Stars: > 1.1*106 Registered stars: Black Holes: > 5500 Pulsars: > 1400 Neutron stars: > 8100 Forum messages: Movies and books: Unique movies and books: Community BlogWant to post news in our Community Blog? Simply login (or sign up) and write about solar system(s), science fiction, movies, books, science, astronomy or anything else related to this site! Recent Posts Last comments Categories Archives
|
