Big dish of Arecibo observatory has reached the end of the line

Enlarge / An aerial view of the Arecibo facility, showing the increasingly fragile cables supporting the instrument platform, as well as the gash caused when one of those cables failed. (credit: University of Central Florida)

Today, the National Science Foundation announced that its famed Arecibo radio observatory would be shut down. Built into a hilltop in Puerto Rico, the main dish of the observatory is over 300 meters across, and its massive size has made it a feature in popular culture ranging from James Bond movies to video games. But despite a long history of scientific contributions, the observatory has been struggling for funding for over a decade, and two cables that support it have failed this year, leaving it in a precarious state.

After engineering studies determined there was no way to repair the hardware without putting workers at risk, the NSF made the decision to shut the observatory down.

More than a big dish

While the sheer scale of the main dish at Arecibo grabbed the most attention, the dish was purely a reflector. The actual business end of the telescope, where radio waves were sensed, was an instrument platform suspended high above it by cables strung from three towers. The instrument platform held a receiver that could be moved to different locations above the disk, giving it the ability to resolve signals from more directions than its fixed dish might suggest.

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