The first of two ALMA transporters — unique vehicles designed to move high-tech radio-telescope antennas in the harsh, high-altitude environment of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array — has been completed and passed its initial operational tests.

Astronomers using data from the National Science Foundation’s Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope have found the largest negatively-charged molecule yet seen in space. The discovery of the third negatively-charged molecule, called an anion, in less than a year and the size of the latest anion will force a drastic revision of theoretical models of interstellar chemistry, the astronomers say.

A new book published by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory tells the story of the founding and early years of the Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia. But it was Fun: the first forty years of radio astronomy at Green Bank, is not a formal history, but rather a scrapbook of early memos, recollections, anecdotes and reports.

Associated Universities, Inc, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory have awarded the 2007 Karl G Jansky Lectureship to Professor Karl M Menten of the Max-Planck-Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn, Germany.

Radio telescopes now in operation or under construction will be indispensible to scientists wrestling with the big, unanswered questions of 21st-Century astrophysics. That was the conclusion of a wide-ranging scientific meeting held in Charlottesville, Virginia, June 18-21, to mark the 50th anniversary of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is teaming with NASA’s upcoming Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope to allow astronomers to use both the orbiting facility and ground-based radio telescopes to maximize their scientific payoff.