W.Va. Week in history - Green Bank

Aug. 24—Green Bank's 140-foot telescope, the world's largest equatorially mounted radio telescope, operates at short wavelengths. The Interferometer, a series of 85-foot telescopes, operated at Green Bank for the U.S. Naval Observatory from 1964 until 1996. A 300-foot meridian transit telescope began observations in October 1961 and operated until it collapsed in 1988. Its replacement, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope, was dedicated on August 25, 2000. The 16-million-pound telescope's surface dimensions are 100 meters by 110 meters. It can be pointed with an accuracy of one arcsecond, equivalent to the width of a human hair seen from six feet away. The 2,004 panels that make up the telescope's surface are mounted at their corners on actuators, little motor-driven pistons, which make it easier to adjust the shape of the surface.