GBT Radio Telescope

The GBT Radio Telescope, Green Bank Telescope is the most advanced large single-dish radio telescope ever constructed. It was founded through the National Science Foundation at $74.5 million.

The GBT is an amazing structure. The radio telescope weighs 16 million pounds. The dish is larger than a football field at 328 feet by 361 feet. It is constructed of girders angled in every direction to create a radio telescope higher than a city building.

The central dish of the GBT consists of 2004 metal panels, and is almost equal to one and a half times the size of a football field at almost 2 acres. The GBT telescope can get radio waves from space that are a billion times weaker than signals from a typical AM radio station 60 miles away.

A system of lasers is used to fine-tune the pointing accuracy of the GBT telescope with a precision of 1 arc-second. This is amazingly equal to the width of a human hair observed from 6 feet away.

The GBT Radio telescope has discovered the true size of galaxies, and the origin of pulsars. It has mapped the magnetic fields in space, and will discover much more in years to come.