Upgrade to improve Arecibo's vision

17 Jun 2002

Astronomers are completing work on a $26 million upgrade that will sharpen the eyesight of the combination radio telescope and radar facility at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, that is run by Cornell University for the National Science Foundation. The project will give researchers the chance to use the observatory, already the world's most powerful of its type, to search for superfast radio pulsars and to extend their understanding of the nature of the whirling gases in galaxies of the early universe and the chemistry of the cloudy birthplaces of stars within the Milky Way.