SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- The radio telescope at Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory will begin mapping the known galaxy on Friday, scientists said.
The radio telescope, the world's most sensitive listening device that is powerful enough to hear planets forming several billion lights years away, received six more radio receivers to expand its range.
The $1 million upgrade, nicknamed the ALFA project, was completed a few weeks ago and 12 scientists will begin using the telescope Friday to map the night sky for future generations, astronomer Dan Werthimer said.
Arecibo expects to find thousands of new pulsars, supernovas, black holes and planets.
The map, with its collection of detailed data about location, identity and properties of what is in space, will go far beyond anything currently in use, researchers say. No such map has been made until now because the telescope had a limited field of view.
"The new upgrade is like having seven Arecibo observatories at once," Werthimer said. "You can see seven different parts of the galaxy simultaneously. The mapping will be seven times faster."
The mapping could be completed in a few months if the observatory devoted all of its telescope hours to the ALFA project, said Sixto Gonzalez, observatory director. However, the process is likely to take at least two years to allow other astronomers to work on other projects like searching for extraterrestrial life, he said.
ALFA, which stands for the Arecibo L-Band Feed Array, discovered its first pulsar last month during a test run, Gonzalez said.
The 1,000-foot-wide parabolic receiver -- composed of 38,000 aluminum tiles -- allows researchers to listen to sounds in space instead of depending on optics, like the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.
The information gathered will be compiled in a worldwide database scientists can access on the Internet, scientists say.
The observatory and its gargantuan dish were built in 1963 by the Department of Defense. It is now run by Cornell University under the National Foundation of Science.
The telescope's 1974 discovery of a twin neutron stars won a pair of scientists the Nobel Prize in 1993 by proving Albert Einstein's theory of gravity waves. Other finds include ice on Mercury and the first known planets outside our solar system.
However, the dish is best known for its cameo appearances in such films as "Contact" and the James Bond adventure "Golden Eye," although the search for alien life takes up less than 1 percent of the telescope's time.
Archived topic from Anythingforums, old topic ID:953, old post ID:11262
Scientists to Map Known Universe
Scientists to Map Known Universe
I'm very interested to see the results!the process is likely to take at least two years to allow other astronomers to work on other projects like searching for extraterrestrial life
I doubt many people have working knowledge of how the known universe is set up, this should help.Archived topic from Anythingforums, old topic ID:953, old post ID:11972