On Aug. I thought well, this is an auxiliary cable, it will be fixed. Maybe in a few months, maybe a little bit more. Our observations were canceled. The impression that I got from the staff of the observatory was that they had the engineers — we could start anytime. They were eager to start repairs. And I was — many people were mad at this decision. And you have to see the point of the NSF that this was a risky operation and people might lose their life there if something happens.
But we know that people were willing to risk their life. On Nov. Before that could happen, on Dec. I thought that the observatory would outlast my life. Altschuler: It was horrible. I tell you, when I heard about it, I cried. Honestly, I tell you, I shed tears. And this was a long time ago, but I spent 17 years of my life there. And my wife and I embraced and we just cried a bit.
It was our home, it was a family. Before the problems, you know — even during the problems — people felt like they belonged to the Arecibo Observatory, and they were proud of it.
Pantoja: This grieving thing is a weird thing. But when that time comes, that is gonna be hard. I did that drive so many times. And I can imagine going there and then not seeing it. When NSF announced its decision to decommission Arecibo, it emphasized that outreach and education activities would continue onsite.
But as researchers around the world mourned the loss of Arecibo on overflowing Zoom calls, a movement to replace the telescope itself began to emerge. Lebron: What is the scientific plan for the facility that they want to put there? I would like to know because I am a scientist. Now we have some call from NSF that they want to strengthen our education and cultural things, but — I am a scientist!
I am a scientist! But where is my science? You would also want some people to be able to return to their communities to pursue a career in astronomy. In January , a white paper began circulating, proposing a next-generation Arecibo telescope. Instead of one giant dish, it would comprise a networked array of smaller dishes and offer twice the sensitivity of the original, with a field of view times larger and an expanded frequency range.
And of all the things you think that they were planning to do — like study the ionosphere, like the first maps of Venus — nobody predicted that they would detect exoplanets or all the pulsars that helped to confirm relativity.
I want to see something majestic there that even the original observatory would be proud of. Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter.
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Last chance to join our Costa Rica Star Party! Learn about the Moon in a great new book New book chronicles the space program. Dave's Universe Year of Pluto. Groups Why Join? Astronomy Day. The Complete Star Atlas. What a magnificent thing. That is a constant. It never grows old. When the receiving platform at the legendary Arecibo Observatory came crashing down in a ton heap of twisted metal on Dec.
Upon opening in , the telescope was called the Arecibo Ionosphere Observatory. Conceived by Cornell University electrical engineer William Gordon as an enormous radar to study the ionosphere, the facility was managed by Cornell and funded by the U. Astronomy talked to Arecibo researchers who worked at the telescope throughout its long history. All interviews have been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. The Arecibo radio telescope stood for 57 years, working on the cutting edge of astronomical research.
For most of its lifetime, it was the largest single radio telescope dish in the world, only surpassed in by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope in China. The early years Gordon : Honestly, the observatory was built to study the upper atmosphere. Radar astronomy and radio astronomy were essentially fringe benefits. Donald Campbell, former Arecibo director: ARPA was interested in trying to figure out ways to detect incoming nuclear missiles by a wake that they might leave in the ionosphere.
While Gordon was primarily interested in studying the upper atmosphere, radio astronomers were intrigued as well. The field was still in its infancy, and the prospect of a facility as powerful as Arecibo drew attention. In , Gordon moved to Arecibo to supervise its construction, leading up to its dedication.
Gordon: It was a matter of who was in control, I guess. Gordon: It was Corson who finally, in , asked me to come back to Cornell. If you ask me, I was mad at the time.
Arecibo was a multifaceted research instrument. Its size made it the most sensitive radio telescope in the world for decades, peering into space to collect faint signals. Its observations led to the Nobel Prize for Physics being awarded to Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor Jr for the discovery of a new type of pulsar that led to new ways to study gravity.
Scientists would look through Arecibo data for narrow-band radio signals, such as a navigation beacon, accidental radar, television broadcasts or some other form of radio leakage from another civilization.
Read more Dramatic footage emerges of Arecibo Observatory collapse. In Frank Drake and the late Carl Sagan used the just-installed Arecibo transmitter to send a message toward globular cluster M13, which hosts thousands of stars. Lasting just under three minutes, the pictorial message contained bits, arranged into 73 lines of 23 characters. That transmitter, used for the Arecibo Message, was also what enabled planetary radar work at Arecibo.
It would send radio waves toward planetary objects, such as just-discovered near-Earth objects, planetary moons and asteroids. A large portion of this work involves characterizing potentially hazardous-to-Earth objects, and Arecibo took on much of this planetary defence work. The next-best facility is some 20 times less sensitive. It is also part of the Deep Space Network, with a priority of communicating with spacecraft. The planetary defence work at Arecibo, funded by NASA, is part of this idea that the telescope could continue to evolve.
Arecibo was doing science right up until 10 August , when that auxiliary cable failed. Minchin and his colleagues had collected sky survey data the day before. Spitler, who studies transient radio sources including millisecond-long flashes of radio waves called fast radio bursts, had been monitoring one as recently as 8 August. There have been calls to rebuild, producing a more advanced structure in the same location. Arecibo was more than a metal dish in the jungle. The scientists it helped forge, the people who turned to it to understand our place in the stars, and the local Puerto Ricans who it filled with pride.
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The Arecibo telescope had been upgraded regularly, with several new instruments slated for installation in the coming years. Brian Jeffs, an engineer at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, who heads the project, says his team expects to discuss options for its future with the NSF eventually. The observatory is a major centre for science education in Puerto Rico, where it has fostered the careers of many astronomers and engineers.
And it has become a part of the pop-culture lexicon, featuring in major movies such as Contact , which was based on a novel by astronomer Carl Sagan, and the James Bond film GoldenEye. The most recent major radio-telescope disaster happened in , when a foot-wide antenna at the Green Bank Observatory collapsed one night, owing to structural failure.
Update 19 November : This story was updated to include more reactions from the scientific community and to add details about ongoing research and upgrades at the observatory. News 09 NOV Research Highlight 05 NOV News 04 NOV News 01 OCT Article 18 AUG Francis Crick Institute. Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily. Advanced search. Skip to main content Thank you for visiting nature. You have full access to this article via your institution.
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