Arecibo Observatory, Puerto Rico: Doorway to the Universe

One of my must-see places when I visited Puerto Rico was the jaw-dropping Arecibo Observatory, the largest single-dish radio telescope in the World.

A staggering 1000 feet in diameter, the enormous dish of the telescope is quite literally built into the mouth of a sink hole in Puerto Rico’s central mountains.

The dish focuses the electromagnetic waves it collects towards a series of antennas positioned above it.

The antennas are suspended high above the dish by a cat’s cradle of cables, which are in turn supported by three massive pillars.

The telescope is used to study all sorts of clever technical fields, including radio astronomy, planetary radar and atmospheric science. As such, the Arecibo Observatory provides a doorway to our better understanding of the Earth, the Solar system and the Universe in general.

The public observation area provides a great bird’s eye view of the dish.

In fact, if you squint and stand on one leg, the dish kind of looks like a giant bird’s eye.

This post was inspired by the photo themes Door from Cheri (Daily Post) and Bird’s Eye (View) from Paula (Lost in Translation).

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