Home > National Radio Astronomy Observatory
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is an institution set up by the United States government for the purpose of radio astronomy. NRAO designs, builds, and operates its own high-power radio telescopes for use by scientists around the world. 1 Locations
Located on the University of Virginia campus.
NRAO is the constructor/owner of the worlds largest fully mobile radio telescope, the GBT, which resides in Green Bank, West Virginia. Green Bank is also the home of NRAO's prinicipal observatory as it is the center of a United States national radio quiet zone, which NRAO is also responsible for maintaining. It resides on a 13,000 square mile piece of land void of electromagnetic pollution. The land was set aside by the FCC in 1958, as a Radio Quiet Zone; the area closest to the telescope is free of fixed radio transmitters, and all other fixed radio transmitters (TV and radio towers) inside the zone are required to transmit away from the telescope, often at limited power. It is hard to keep the site free of radio pollution. To aid with the limiting of outside interference, the surrounding area is planted with pines characterized by needles of a certain length as to 'block' electromagnetic interference at the wavelengths used by the observatory. At one point, the observatory faced the problem of North American flying squirrels tagged with US Fish & Wildlife Service telemetry transmitters. The observatory contains many other notable telescopes, including 3 85 foot telescopes forming an interferometer array, a 40 foot telescope used by school groups and organizations for small scale research, a fixed radio ' horn' built to observe Cygnus X-1, as well as the original Jansky antenna built to detect the interference that was discovered to be previously unknown natural radio waves emitted by the universe.
The NRAO's facility in Socorro is the Array Operations Center (AOC). Located on the New Mexico Tech campus, the AOC serves as the headquarters for the Very Large ArrayThe Very Large Array VLA is a radio astronomy observatory located on the Plains of San Agustin, between the towns of Magdalena and Datil, some fifty miles (80 km) west of Socorro, New Mexico, USA. The VLA stands at 34°04'43" North, 107°37'04" West, at an (VLA), which was the setting for the movie ContactContact is a 1997 film adaptation of the science fiction novel Contact by Carl Sagan. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, its main stars are Jodie Foster as Eleanor Ann "Ellie" Arroway and Matthew McConaughey as Palmer Joss. Plot summary The plot in the movie is, and the control center for the Very Long Baseline ArrayThe Very Long Baseline Array VLBA is a system of ten radio telescopes controlled remotely from the Array Operations Center in Socorro, New Mexico ( USA). The array works together as the world's largest dedicated, full-time astronomical instrument. Its con (VLBA). VLBA telescopes are located throughout the world.
1.4 Tucson, ArizonaTucson (pronounced tusn) is a city located in Pima County, Arizona. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 486,699. A July 1, 2002 Census estimate puts the city's population at 503,151. It is the largest city in southern Arizona, and th
Offices are located on the University of ArizonaThe University of Arizona is an institution of higher learning located in Tucson, Arizona. Created by the Arizona Territorial Legislature as a land-grant university in 1885, classes met for the first time in 1891 with 32 students. In 2002, total enrollmen campus. Formerly operated the 12 meterFor other uses of "metre" and "meter", see Metre (disambiguation). The metre is the basic unit of length in the International System of Units (SI: Systeme International d'Unites). It is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in absolute vacu telescope on Kitt Peak. That telescope has been shut down and funding rerouted to the Atacoma Large Millimeter Array ( ALMA) instead.
