Hauling an 85-foot telescope around Green Bank

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Hauling an 85-foot telescope around Green Bank

A bulldozer and a tow tractor pull the 85-2 down the road that spanned the Green Bank Interferometer (GBI), the NRAO’s first array. Built-in tires on this and its twin, the 85-3, allowed an astronomer to change their separation from the stationary Howard E. Tatel 85-foot by getting telescope technicians to haul the telescopes to new distances from each other. Changing the distance between the 85-footers changed the resolution of the array’s combined view: farther equals higher resolution. By adding a third element into the array, the sensitivity of the array increased.

Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF

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