Last year, the famed Arecibo radio telescope met an undignified and premature end when a cable supporting the receiver array snapped. That ended, at least for now, more than 50 years of observations at the observatory, although it remains open for some research functions.
ScienceMag has published a long article that describes the history of the telescope, explains in detail why it failed, and discusses plans to replace the telescope.
The researchers first considered a new fixed dish, along with an array of independently steerable smaller ones. But in the white paper delivered to NSF last month, they went with something more ambitious: a flat, 300-meter-wide, rigid platform, bridging the sinkhole, and studded with more than 1000 closely packed 9-meter dishes. The dishes would not steer but the disk would, with hydraulics tilting it more than 45° from the horizontal. At such an extreme tilt, one edge of the disk would be higher than Arecibo’s existing support towers. Steering “will be a great mechanical challenge,” says Anish Roshi, head of astrophysics at the observatory.
In this design, modern receivers built into each dish could cover a broader frequency range than its predecessor and, fired synchronously, the collective radar of 1000 dishes could send out a more powerful beam than a single transmitter. Dubbed the Next Generation Arecibo Telescope, it would be nearly twice as sensitive and have four times the radar power of the original. The steerable platform would enable it to see more than twice as much of the sky as its predecessor, while the field of view of its 1000 dishes would cover a swath 500 times larger.
Perhaps, with an new administration in Washington that respects science, money will be found and Arecibo will once again become a major radio observatory.
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