GREEN BANK, W.Va., Aug. 25 — In an isolated mountain valley, a giant telescope nearly as tall as the Washington Monument is getting ready to start searching the sky for clues to the creation of the universe. The $75 million Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope — the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope — was dedicated Friday after almost 10 years of construction.
AMONG THE DIGNITARIES on the guest list were Byrd, the influential Democratic senator from West Virginia, as well as National Science Foundation Director Rita Colwell, NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin and National Radio Astronomy Observatory Director Paul Vanden Bout.
“We expect it to probe such mysteries as the birth of galaxies in the early universe, the birth of stars and the chemical composition of interstellar dust and gas,” Colwell said. “These are the very elements created in the universe that eventually become the stuff of biological systems.”
The telescope towers 485 feet, making it more than 100 feet higher than the Statue of Liberty and just 70 feet shorter than the Washington Monument. Its 16 million-pound telescope’s dish is 100 by 110 meters, larger than a football field.
This telescope will allow scientists on Earth to touch the stars without leaving the hills of West Virginia,” Byrd said.
The in-ground telescope at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, with a dish about 1,000 feet in diameter, is much larger but lacks the adjustability of the Green Bank Telescope.
Despite its size, the Green Bank Telescope can be pointed with an accuracy of one arc-second, the width of a human hair seen 6 feet away.
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Alien - Administrator / Owner
["Everything was true. God was an alien. Oz really is over the
rainbow. ...and Midian is where the monsters live." -Nightbreed]
AMONG THE DIGNITARIES on the guest list were Byrd, the influential Democratic senator from West Virginia, as well as National Science Foundation Director Rita Colwell, NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin and National Radio Astronomy Observatory Director Paul Vanden Bout.
“We expect it to probe such mysteries as the birth of galaxies in the early universe, the birth of stars and the chemical composition of interstellar dust and gas,” Colwell said. “These are the very elements created in the universe that eventually become the stuff of biological systems.”
The telescope towers 485 feet, making it more than 100 feet higher than the Statue of Liberty and just 70 feet shorter than the Washington Monument. Its 16 million-pound telescope’s dish is 100 by 110 meters, larger than a football field.
This telescope will allow scientists on Earth to touch the stars without leaving the hills of West Virginia,” Byrd said.
The in-ground telescope at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, with a dish about 1,000 feet in diameter, is much larger but lacks the adjustability of the Green Bank Telescope.
Despite its size, the Green Bank Telescope can be pointed with an accuracy of one arc-second, the width of a human hair seen 6 feet away.
Want to learn more?
----------------------------
Alien - Administrator / Owner
["Everything was true. God was an alien. Oz really is over the
rainbow. ...and Midian is where the monsters live." -Nightbreed]