Westerbork Radio Telescope
Thursday, 14th September 2006 by Alex Turnbull
The Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands is:
an aperture synthesis interferometer that consists of a linear array of 14 antennas arranged on a 2.7 km East-West line.
Um... So, aperture synthesis is when a collection of telescopes are banded together to achieve the same "resolving power" as an instrument the size of the entire collection. And an 'interferometer' is, ah... best explained on the Interferometry Wikipedia page! There's 12 antennas right next to each other, the easternmost of which can be moved on rail tracks, and a little further to the east are two further antennas, whose locations can also be adjusted.
The WSRT is often combined with other telescopes, including the Lovell Telescope), to perform Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) observations as part of the European VLBI Network.
Thanks to Paul Boven and Sven van Heel.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
No mention of the nearby WWII German concentration camp ?
sure there is, there it is – immediately above this comment 😀
A related site (i could not find it when searching..) is definetly Atacama, chile. As it is famously known as, vlt, very large telescope.. If you are in to astronomy, this is the place to be =)
hmm.. forgot the link =) View Placemark
Also very close to the Assen race track (slightly NW) Google Maps Link The track has been redesigned since this picture was taken and now features a much smaller “north loop” section.
On closer inspection (blimey that is hi-res!) , you can see motorbikes on the circuit (probably just a track day as there are no spectators or race trucks). They are not using the north loop section and some sections of the track are being re-vamped, which I am not sure, but I think dates the image to a few years back (I reckon 2002?) Oh, nice Radio Telescopes too
Can’t leave out Arecibo- https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=18.344551,-66.752908&z=18
Nice shadow!
Just realized Arecibo has already been posted… but there it is again anyway. Looks like the original post wasn’t hi-res.
Bjorn, you should have submitted that! Did you?
I just found Arecibo on my own (circular road around it gave it away in hybrid mode) before realizing it was already posted, hehe. If you guys like white dots in the desert, here’s the Very Large Array in New Mexico. https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=1072&c=&f=q&hl=en&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=18&ll=52.915155,6.61157&spn=0.002222,0.005032&t=k I guess they can’t update everything at once, and once the VLA is in hi-res, it should make for a pretty impressive sight.
Whoops, wrong link. =) https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=34.076052,-107.615891&z=14
Here is the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, just outside of Canberra, Australia’s captial city. Not a radio telescope but a tracking station. Google Maps Link The big dish is 70 meters across. The southern most dish was one of the two Australian dishes used during the Apollo 11 moon landing (however at the time it was about 20km south of here, it was later moved). The other dish used during the landing (from the movie “The Dish”) is a radio telescope and is located near Parkes in New South Wales but unfortunately is low res.
Does anybody know the purpose of this map of the Netherlands, just North of the telescopes? https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=52.916051,6.608282&z=18“
that map of the Netherlands is actually a monument for the WWII concentrationkamp Westerbork. Ground level shots here (text in Dutch): http://www.westerbork.nl/site1.2/nederlands/monumenten/m02.html
it consists of 102,000 bricks, symbolising the 102,000 people (mostly jews) from the Netherlands deported in WWII
These comments are screaming for a telescope-megapost. 😀
Monasterium – ya got me, I can’t really avoid it any longer can I! Consider a telescope megapost “in the works” 😀
Woohoo! Nice one, Monasterium.
Here is the Lowell observatory in Flagstaff. View Placemark The one ot the top is the telescope used to discover the now non-planet Pluto View Placemark
Here are the other two sites that make the Deep Space Network. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Network
Goldstone Observatory in the Mojave Desert View Placemark Unfortunately the Madrid site is in Low-Rez View Placemark