![]() The Reber Telescope was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989. The project will use 20% of the telescope’s observation time and bring $20 million to the Green Bank Observatory over the next decade. The project is a 10 year, $100 million initiative by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and cosmologist Stephen Hawking. In January 2016, Project Breakthrough Listen began using the 300 foot Green Bank Telescope to search 200 stars nearest to earth for radio emissions that might indicate intelligent life. In 1995, the search was revived in Project Phoenix, privately supported and based in Australia but also using the 140-foot telescope in Green Bank from September 1996 until April 1998, for the focus on northern stars with planets. The SETI project continued until it lost congressional support in 1993. The NASA Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence began at the NRAO in April 1960, when astronomer Frank Drake began Project Ozma, using the 85-foot Tatel telescope that is sensitive enough to detect routine radio signals such as we produce on Earth. 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. It can be pointed with an accuracy of one arcsecond, equivalent to the width of a human hair seen from six feet away. The 16-million-pound telescope’s surface dimensions are 100 meters by 110 meters. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope, was dedicated on August 25, 2000. A 300-foot meridian transit telescope began observations in October 1961 and operated until it collapsed in 1988. The Interferometer, a series of 85-foot telescopes, operated at Green Bank for the U.S. Green Bank’s 140-foot telescope, the world’s largest equatorially mounted radio telescope, operates at short wavelengths. Today the NRAO provides free access to its research equipment to scientists from all over the world. A 13,000 square mile National Radio Quiet Zone was established when construction began at Green Bank in 1958, and the first radio telescopes were in operation by fall 1959. The Green Bank site was chosen in 1955 for its surrounding mountains, which shield it from radio interference, and its low population and lack of industrial development. Radio astronomy differs from visual astronomy in that the dish-shaped telescopes gather radio waves rather than light waves. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory ( NRAO), funded by the National Science Foundation and operated by Associated Universities, Inc., is located near Green Bank in Pocahontas County.
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