This Two-Acre Telescope Powers Science’s Search For Dark Energy

This Two-Acre Telescope Powers Science’s Search For Dark Energy


For lack of a better word, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) is ginorgantic. (That’s the evolved form of ginormous). At seven million kilograms, it is both the world’s largest, most technologically advanced single-dish radio telescope — and the single biggest land-based movable structure on the planet.

The telescope was dedicated in 2000 to honour the late Senator Robert C. Byrd (D – WV). It’s located at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) site in Green Bank, West Virginia, within the National Radio Quiet Zone, which protects it from signal interference.

The GBT’s dish measures 100 by 110 metres — equal surface area as an English football pitch — and is composed of more than 2000 aluminium surface panels. These ride over 2200 actuators designed to help correct for gravity distortions. The reflector is offset, like a DirectTV dish, which gives the aperture a clearer view of the sky while minimising diffraction. The GBT is fully steerable and can focus anywhere within 85 per cent of the visible sky.

The Green Bank Telescope operates an average of 6500 hours every year, roughly 2500 of which are dedicated to high frequency science. Its sensitive dish probes the nature of pulsars, sniffs out atoms and molecules in deep space, and studies the effects of magnetic fields. It searches for Dark Energy, and even looks around for extraterrestrial life. Astronomers from around the world vie to spend some time with the machine. [NRAOWikipedia100 Hours of Astronomy]

Image: NRAO/AUI


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