Recent photo of the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope and the 85-3, the third 85-foot telescope to join the Green Bank Interferometer, NRAO’s first array, built in 1964. The control room for the GBI is the brick building to the left of the 85-3 and houses the correlator and data recording devices for the GBI.
85-2 in Summertime
The second 85-foot telescope, which was part of the Green Bank Interferometer, was assembled here in 1964. There was a road constructed between the three telescopes, so that they could be moved closer or further away from each other with ease.
Inspected the 85-3 in Green Bank
Telescope technicians ride the lift up to the prime focus of the 85-3, an 85-foot radio telescope in Green Bank. At the prime focus is a receiver that needs changing out. From 1989 until 2011, the 85-3 was used for monitoring of pulsar timing and brightness for scientists at Princeton, Berkeley, and Oberlin College. About 35 pulsars were observed every day, at frequencies of 610 and 327 MHz.
The VLA in maintenance mode
In this photo, all of the antennas of the Very Large Array are in their maintenance position — pointing straight up like tulips in the New Mexico desert. The VLA has 27 antennas at work in the array, with one spare.
Close up of VLA antenna dish
Standing on a 25-meter dish antenna at the Very Large Array in New Mexico gives an antenna’s eye view of the array. The VLA telescopes are busy observing, as they do day and night, for 5000 hours every year.
GBI’s first 85-foot telescope
The 85-foot Howard E. Tatel telescope in Green Bank was the first radio telescope of the NRAO and began observing on February 13, 1959. It was nicknamed the Tatel and became famous in 1960 for performing the world’s first SETI observations under the direction of Dr. Frank Drake.