A marvellous looking and functional Space Observatory doomed to collapse in dangerous fashion
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Gps Coordinates / 18.3460067,-66.7525681
Arecibo Observatory Doomed Astronomy Center Collapsed Satellite Space VR
Southern Hemisphere-Route 625 Blvd, Arecibo 00612, Puerto Rico
The 57-year-old telescope at Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory also featured in the James Bond film GoldenEye, when Pierce Brosnan's 007 famously scaled the structure while grappling with Sean Bean's traitorous 006. Unfortunately, the telescope sustained severe damage in August and had been deteriorating since.
Famous Arecibo telescope that starred in a James Bond film GoldenEye to be demolished
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Space Observatory before collapse during July 2016
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Gps Coordinates / 18.3458561,-66.7525676
Sad news for the astronomy world. The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, home to an epic telescope dish, is saying goodbye. The observatory suffered serious structural damage when a cable failed in August, and the situation's only gotten worse.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced on Thursday that it'll begin plans to decommission the 305-meter (1,000-foot) telescope, ending the device's 57 years of service.
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Space Observatory before collapse during Dec 2019
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Gps Coordinates / 18.3460557,-66.7525492
It's Final destination
In the early morning of 10 August 2020, Sravani Vaddi, a postdoc astronomer at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, was working from home, but her thoughts were at Arecibo's giant radio telescope. At 2 a.m., she had one precious hour to focus the 305-meter dish on NGC 7469, a distant galaxy. At its center, two supermassive black holes wheeled around each other, following an earlier galaxy merger. Vaddi wanted to see whether having two dark hearts instead of the usual one made the galaxy shine more brightly by stirring up gases and stoking starbirth. Radio emissions from the glowing gases would help her find out.
When she checked in near the end of her observations, computer servers suggested the telescope wasn't pointing at the galaxy anymore. She couldn't get an on-site telescope operator on the phone, so she gave up and went to bed.
She woke up to a full inbox. At 2:45 a.m., toward the end of her slot, an 8-centimeter-thick steel cable, one of 18 suspending a 900-ton instrument platform high above the dish, had pulled out of its socket at one end and fallen, slicing into the dish. "I was totally shocked. How could a cable break?" she says. Although she didn't know it at the time, the photons she gathered from NGC 7469 would be the last ones Arecibo would ever scoop up.
Aerial View Of the soon to be replaced top view of the doomed Observatory
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Aerial View of the Arecibo Observatory since it has exploded and crashed the view on Google maps may be subject to change
Watch the Observatory Collapse Below
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Engineering failures and a harsh climate conspired in the sudden collapse of the Arecibo telescope. Now, researchers are planning a rebirth.
