Seti at the the end....

[Sir Ulli]

Cuts threaten world‘s largest telescope

By DANICA COTO, Associated Press Writer Thu May 31, 8:46 PM ET

ARECIBO, Puerto Rico - Engineers will travel to this Puerto Rican coastal town in coming weeks to study whether to shut down the world‘s largest radio telescope, which was featured in the movie "Contact" but now faces steep budget cuts, observatory officials said Thursday.

But fears that it could face extinction began late last year, when a panel commissioned by the National Science Foundation , a U.S. federal agency, called for deep budget cuts and said officials should consider eliminating it entirely at the end of the decade.

"That‘s not our desire. But we are looking at this for planning purposes," said Richard Barvainis, program manager of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, which includes the Arecibo observatory.

The telescope‘s budget will plummet from $10.5 million this year to $4 million by 2010, Barvainis said, with the savings going to construct a telescope 20 times more powerful, perhaps in Australia or South Africa.

Officials said that regardless of what happens with the possible budget cuts, the telescope‘s visitor center, which draws about 120,000 people a year, would remain open.
......

http://www.leadingthecharge.com/ViewArticle.aspx?id=117431&source=2

Greetings from Germany NRW
Sir Ulli

 

[Vento1]

Not the best of news but there must be other telescopes they could use.

 

[eaglescouter]

World’s largest SETI station being built in Hat Creek

HAT CREEK — The equivalent of 42 giant ears will soon be cupped toward the night-time sky, listening in unison for a distant “hello” from a far away world.

All in Shasta County’s rural backyard.

For the last year or so, scientists at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute’s Hat Creek Radio Observatory, 75 miles east of Redding, have been installing and fine-tuning a set of 42 radio astronomy dishes.

The scientists have been working frantically to get the dishes ready for the day when they can all work together to listen for an alien radio signal.

That day could come as early as July, when scientists from the University of California at Berkeley are expected to install a device called a “beam former.”

The device will effectively turn all 42 dishes into one big dish, making rural Shasta County the site of the world’s largest space-scanning radio observatory, said Rick Forster, resident astronomer at the Hat Creek observatory’s Allen Telescope Array.

he operation is not cheap. Each of the shiny dishes came with a $150,000 price tag, Forster said.

The array is named after Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, who donated a large chunk of the $12.5 million construction costs, Forster said.

The hope is to eventually grow the site into a 350- or even a 500-dish array, a dream that could take years or possibly even decades to be realized because the operation is entirely funded by donations.

Hubbard told Reuters that more dishes are better when it comes to picking up a faraway or weak alien broadcast.

“You don’t have to have somebody who is planning to broadcast a signal,” Hubbard said. “You hope to pick up somebody’s old radio broadcast that left a different planet hundreds or thousands of years ago.”

Even if the Allen Array never once picks up a signal from another world, Forster said it’s sky-scanning search will not be in vain. The fully-assembled array also will double as a massive radio telescope, capturing images of distant celestial bodies, he said.

Already, some of the recently installed dishes link together in small groups. They have captured some “marvelous” images of the Andromeda Galaxy, the Milky Way’s nearest neighbor, Forster said.

Full article with pictures can be read at: http://www.redding.com/news/2007/may/30/new-frontiers-worlds-largest-seti-station-being-bu/

 

[Sir Ulli]

Full article with pictures can be read at: http://www.redding.com/news/2007/may/30/new-frontiers-worlds-largest-seti-station-being-bu/

Thanks for the Info and the Links...

Greetings from Germany
Sir Ulli

 

[kraven]

Sweet! I should go check this out, it's only an hour and a half away.

 

[QuietIce]

Ooooh, more Saturday morning reads!

A lot of people think I'm "out of it" for not reading the newspaper - this stuff is MUCH better ...

 

[freakdiablo]

I say we pool our money, launch a probe that only we know about out past Pluto, and transmit a heavily encrypted copies of ET and Contact, and repeat when its done.. People believe in aliens again and donate money

 

[QuietIce]

Nice idea but they'd figure it out from the parallax ...

 

[eaglescouter]

Sweet! I should go check this out, it's only an hour and a half away.

If you arrive on a weekend you will pull up to a Wrought Iron gate that is very clearly locked.

Park off to the side (not blocking the gate) and then walk up to the left side of the gate where you will discover a people gate that is not locked.

Walk in and stroll thru the paved loop that runs from the gate, out to the monitoring facility, and gives you a terrific view of the Allen Array.

On weekends you are likely to feel totally alone and may not see another human. On weekdays the monitoring facility is open to the public.

From Interstate 5 at Redding just take Highway 44 East to Highway 89 North to Hat Creek. Be sure to fill up in Redding (gasoline and lunch materials), after your hike thru the Seti Array you can visit the Lava Tube (nice low temperatures) then head south to Lassen Volcanic Park and eat lunch at Manzineta Lake. Then take the hike to the Bumpass Hell (Yes, real place, spelled correctly) and see the boiling mud pots and stuff.

It's a great day trip.

 

[thlnk3r]

Ah that would be a nice road trip, kinda far from me though hehe