Green Bank Observatory
Green Bank, West Virginia
With radio astronomy as its foundation, the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Observatory (GBO) is a world leader in advancing research, innovation and education. The Green Bank Observatory enables leading-edge research at radio wavelengths by offering telescope, facility and advanced instrumentation access to the astronomy community as well as to other basic and applied research communities.
The Green Bank Observatory, located in Green Bank, West Virginia, is home to the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope. The Green Bank Telescope’s 2.3-acre collecting area has many novel features, including an unblocked aperture, an active surface and state-of-the-art receivers. Location within the 13,000-square-mile National Radio Quiet Zone protects Green Bank from harmful radio interference. These features enable extreme sensitivity to faint radio signals over a large range of frequencies, advancing our knowledge of astronomy, astro-chemistry, fundamental physics and cosmology.
Planetary Defense and Science
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Green Bank Observatory and Raytheon Intelligence & Space are designing a high-power, next generation planetary radar system for the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). The prototype of this system, which used the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) as the receiver, produced some of the highest resolution radar images of the Moon ever captured from Earth, paving the way for a next-generation radar system to study planets, moons and asteroids in the Solar System.
Read the full news release.