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What Does a Radio Telescope Observatory Control Room Look Like?

-- Annalisa Andriani | September 24, 2020

Control room of the 140-foot telescope in 1972

Question:

Hello,

my name is Annalisa, I hope you don’t mind emailing you. I am working on a film project which requires recreating a radio observatory operations room. I have been doing some research and I am trying to collect some images to use as reference. However, I am not sure I am going in the right direction as I am finding myself in an unknown territory.
I am not sure if this is possible at all, but is there any chance I could get some advice on how this space would be set up and what kind of equipment would be used? I would be forever grateful.

Thank you so much for your time.

Best,
Annalisa

-- Annalisa Andriani

Answer:

If you google “VLA control room” and select the images found, you will get a very good sampling of images of the VLA control room, which is typical of radio observatory control rooms. All of the equipment in a radio observatory control room is comprised of computers and electronic monitoring devices of various kinds. The images and movies you can find online as noted above are an excellent representation of a typical radio telescope control room.

-- Jeff Mangum

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the U.S. National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
	Founded in 1956, the NRAO provides state-of-the-art radio telescope facilities for use by the international scientific community. NRAO telescopes are open to all astronomers regardless of institutional or national affiliation. Observing time on NRAO telescopes is available on a competitive basis to qualified scientists after evaluation of research proposals on the basis of scientific merit, the capability of the instruments to do the work, and the availability of the telescope during the requested time. NRAO also provides both formal and informal programs in education and public outreach for teachers, students, the general public, and the media.
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