Arecibo Telescope facts for kids
The Arecibo Telescope was a 305 m (1,000 ft) spherical reflector dish built into a natural sinkhole at the Arecibo Observatory which was completed in November 1963.
For more than 50 years, the Arecibo Telescope was the world's largest single-aperture telescope, surpassed in July 2016 by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China.
On 19 November 2020, the National Science Foundation announced that they would close and dismantle the telescope. On 1 December 2020, the telescope collapsed.
Images for kids
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A detailed view of the beam-steering mechanism. The triangular platform at the top was fixed, and the azimuth arm rotated beneath it. To the right was the Gregorian sub-reflector, and to the left was the remains of the 96-foot-long (29 m) line feed tuned to 430 MHz (destroyed by Hurricane Maria). Also to the right was the catwalk and part of the rectangular waveguide that brought the 2.5 MW 430 MHz radar transmitter's signal up to the focal region.
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The Arecibo Telescope during demolition process, December 2021
See also
In Spanish: Radiotelescopio de Arecibo para niños
