Radio Telescope To Weigh 3000 Tons

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31479, 20 September 1967, Page 7

Radio Telescope To Weigh 3000 Tons

(N.Z,P.A.-Reuter)

BONN (West Germany)

What is claimed to be the world’s largest, fully steerable radio telescope will be built in West Germany at a cost of $4 million. The telescope, as big as a football field, will be used to further research and communications.

When built near Bonn, it will first be used to pick up radio waves which have been travelling through space for some 8000 million years from the most remote objects known to science. West German radio astronomers hope the waves will increase knowledge about the origin of the universe.

The telescope, due for completion in 1969, will later find a more commercial use by working with artificial satellites in transmitting and receiving information round the world. ,The huge parabolic mirror, which will collect the radip

waves into a central receiver, is 328 ft across. This is 78ft more than Britain’s big radio, telescope at Jodrell Bank near Manthekter. The whole instrument weighs nearly 3000 tons. The engineers, the Friodrieh Krupp and M.A.N. Companier, aim at achieving a stability which will keep the mirror within a tenth of an inch of perfect shape. . The engineering problems of accurately controlling the huge radio telescope are formidable. It must be possible to set it exactly at any angle, in spite of wind pressure which can build up to something over 1000 tons on an area the size of a football field raised 300 ft in the air. This will be partly overcome by making the outer edge of the dish of wire webbing, which reflects radio waves but allows the wind to pass through and thus lowers resistance. The central part of the dish will have a radioreflective light metal surface. The cost of the telescope is being met by the Volkswagen Foundation, which will place it at the disposal of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, under the direction of Professor Dr. Otto Bachenberg. There is already a radio telescope in West Germany which stands near the proposed site for the new one in the Eifel mountains south-

west of Bonn. But it is considerably smaller, only 80ft across, and has been rendered nearly useless by a local radar station. The new telescope will be protected from radar disturbances by a range of hills.