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The Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope is a
radio telescope A radio telescope is a specialized antenna and radio receiver used to detect radio waves from astronomical radio sources in the sky. Radio telescopes are the main observing instrument used in radio astronomy, which studies the radio frequency ...
in the Ahr Hills (part of the
Eifel The Eifel (; lb, Äifel, ) is a low mountain range in western Germany and eastern Belgium. It occupies parts of southwestern North Rhine-Westphalia, northwestern Rhineland-Palatinate and the southern area of the German-speaking Community of ...
) in Bad Münstereifel, Germany. For 29 years the Effelsberg Radio Telescope was the largest fully steerable radio telescope on Earth, surpassing the Lovell Telescope in the UK. In 2000, it was surpassed by the Green Bank Observatory's
Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in Green Bank, West Virginia, US is the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope, surpassing the Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope in Germany. The Green Bank site was part of the National Radio ...
in Green Bank, US, which has a slightly larger elliptical 100 by 110-metre aperture.


Geography

The telescope is located about 1.3 km northeast of Effelsberg, a southeastern part of the town of Bad Münstereifel in North Rhine-Westphalia. It is less than 300 m west of the 398 m high Hünerberg, which is in neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate. The boundary is a stream, the Effelsberger Bach, which runs only a few metres east of the telescope. The Effelsberger Bach is 6.5 km long, flowing from the Effelsberger Wald into the Sahrbach, which in turn flows south and into the Ahr river. A hiking path leads past the telescope; in 2004 part of this was turned into a planet trail with information panels about the Solar System with its
planets A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a young ...
. The trail ends at the 39 cm model of the Sun next to the visitor centre.


Radio telescope

The Effelsberg radio telescope is operated by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, the radio astronomy institute of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. It was constructed from 1968 to 1971 and inaugurated on 1 August 1972. A major technical difficulty in building a radio telescope of 100 m diameter was how to deal with the deformation of the mirror due to gravity when it is rotated to point in a different direction. The mirror must have a precise parabolic shape to focus the radio waves, but a conventionally-designed dish of this size would "sag" slightly when rotated so the mirror loses its parabolic shape. The Effelsberg telescope uses a novel computer-designed mirror support structure which deforms in such a way that the deformed mirror will always take a parabolic shape. The focus will move during such deformation, and the feed antenna suspended in front of the mirror is moved slightly by the computer control system as the telescope is rotated to keep it at the focus. Tests after completion of the telescope showed that the intended accuracy of the mirror surface of 1 mm had not only been met, but exceeded significantly. About 45% of the observing time is available to external astronomers. The Effelsberg 100-m telescope was involved in several surveys, including the one at 408 MHz (73 cm) by Haslam et al.


See also

* Stockert Radio Telescope * Lovell Telescope – at Jodrell Bank Observatory


References


External links


Official website of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy

Dr Norbert Junkes video interview on Astrotalkuk.org

Effelsberg Official Webpage


{{Authority control Radio telescopes Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) 1971 establishments in West Germany Astronomy in Germany Buildings and structures in Euskirchen (district)