Radio Telescopes


The Lovell telescope’s huge white bowl can be seen for miles around in Cheshire.
As a radio telescope, the parabolic dish gathers incoming radio waves from space.

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Radio Telescopes

  • its used for to pick up waves instead of light waves.
  • its like reflecting telescopes, have a big dish instead of mirror to collect and focus data.
  • at the centre of its dish, radio telescope has an antenna to pick up radio signals.
  • radio waves are much longer than light waves, so radio telescopes dishes are very big, up to 100 metres across.
  • VLBA – Very Long Baseline Array is made of ten dishes scattered across the USA. (VLBA’s map)
  • radio astronomy led to discovery of pulsars and background radiation from the Big Bang.
  • radio galaxies are very distant – only faintly visible , but they can be detached because they give out radio waves.
  • radio astronomy proved that the Milky-Way is a disc-shaped galaxy with spiralling arms. (diagram)

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Largest Radio Telescope

Arecibo Observatory Aerial View.jpgAerial view of the Observatory.

  • at 1,000 feet / 305 metres across, the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico in South America, is the largest dish telescope in the world. (wikipedia / website)

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