Even though the National Science Foundation announced last year that it would not rebuild or replace the iconic Arecibo radio dish in Puerto Rico — which collapsed in 2020 – a glimmer of hope remained among supporters that the remaining astronomy infrastructure would be utilized in some way. Instead, the NSF announced this week … Continue reading "It’s Official. No More Astronomy at Arecibo"
Sad that it’s gone. Kinda curious if part of the reason for not rebuilding it is due to the possibility of more frequent hurricanes that are even more severe. Regardless of why, I hope the US builds another next gen one to rebuild our capabilities to detect asteroids and other stellar phenomena.
Honestly, that probably is part of it. That being said, as a radio telescope Arecibo wasn’t really used for asteroids or anything else within the solar system except as a giant transmission antenna. The kind of things Arecibo was designed to observe was radio sources on the far edges of the visible universe.
Honestly, I don’t think another Arecibo is even necessary, it was a product of the technology of the time. In more recent times there’s been a shift towards using networked arrays of radio telescopes, rather than just one big one. The EHT Array used to directly image Sag A* provides an effective aperture that a single telescope could never be able to match.
Sad that it’s gone. Kinda curious if part of the reason for not rebuilding it is due to the possibility of more frequent hurricanes that are even more severe. Regardless of why, I hope the US builds another next gen one to rebuild our capabilities to detect asteroids and other stellar phenomena.
Honestly, that probably is part of it. That being said, as a radio telescope Arecibo wasn’t really used for asteroids or anything else within the solar system except as a giant transmission antenna. The kind of things Arecibo was designed to observe was radio sources on the far edges of the visible universe.
Honestly, I don’t think another Arecibo is even necessary, it was a product of the technology of the time. In more recent times there’s been a shift towards using networked arrays of radio telescopes, rather than just one big one. The EHT Array used to directly image Sag A* provides an effective aperture that a single telescope could never be able to match.