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 portion of the electromagnetic spectrum emitted by astronomical objects, just as optical telescopes are the main observing instrument used in traditional optical astronomy which studies the light wave portion of the spectrum coming from astronomical objects. Unlike optical telescopes, radio telescopes can be used in the daytime as well as at night.
Grote Reber was an American pioneer of radio astronomy, which combined his interests in amateur radio and amateur astronomy. He was instrumental in investigating and extending Karl Jansky's pioneering work and conducted the first sky survey in the radio frequencies.
Jan Hendrik Oort was a Dutch astronomer who made significant contributions to the understanding of the Milky Way and who was a pioneer in the field of radio astronomy. The New York Times called him "one of the century's foremost explorers of the universe"; the European Space Agency website describes him as "one of the greatest astronomers of the 20th century" and states that he "revolutionised astronomy through his ground-breaking discoveries." In 1955, Oort's name appeared in Life magazine's list of the 100 most famous living people. He has been described as "putting the Netherlands in the forefront of postwar astronomy."
Parkes Observatory is a radio astronomy observatory, located 20 kilometres (12 mi) north of the town of Parkes, New South Wales, Australia. It hosts Murriyang, the 64 m CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope also known as "The Dish", along with two smaller radio telescopes. The 64 m dish was one of several radio antennae used to receive live television images of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Its scientific contributions over the decades led the ABC to describe it as "the most successful scientific instrument ever built in Australia" after 50 years of operation.
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is an intergovernmental international radio telescope project being built in Australia (low-frequency) and South Africa (mid-frequency). The combining infrastructure, the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO), and headquarters, are located at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in the United Kingdom. The SKA cores are being built in the southern hemisphere, where the view of the Milky Way galaxy is the best and radio interference is at its least.
Earth–Moon–Earth communication (EME), also known as Moon bounce, is a radio communications technique that relies on the propagation of radio waves from an Earth-based transmitter directed via reflection from the surface of the Moon back to an Earth-based receiver.
The Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry European Research Infrastructure Consortium (JIVE) was established by a decision of the European Commission in December 2014, and assumed the activities and responsibilities of the JIVE foundation, which was established in December 1993. JIVE's mandate is to support the operations and users of the European VLBI Network (EVN), in the widest sense.
The Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) is an aperture synthesis interferometer built on the site of the former World War II Nazi detention and transit camp Westerbork, north of the village of Westerbork, Midden-Drenthe, in the northeastern Netherlands.
The Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) is a large radio telescope, with an antenna network located mainly in the Netherlands, and spreading across 7 other European countries as of 2019. Originally designed and built by ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, it was first opened by Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands in 2010, and has since been operated on behalf of the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) partnership by ASTRON.
Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) is a radio astronomy observatory located near Big Pine, California (US) in Owens Valley. It lies east of the Sierra Nevada, approximately 350 kilometers (220 mi) north of Los Angeles and 20 kilometers (12 mi) southeast of Bishop. It was established in 1956, and is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The Owens Valley Solar Array portion of the observatory has been operated by New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) since 1997.
Sonnenborgh Observatory is an astronomical observatory and museum open to the public, located in Utrecht, Netherlands. It was founded in 1853 as a university observatory and from 1854 until 1897 it was the first home of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute. After the meteorological institute moved to de Bilt it was operated again by Utrecht University. In 2013 its main function became a museum, organising viewing evenings for amateur astronomists. It is located on, what is now, the only surviving bastion of the city walls of Utrecht.
ASTRON is the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. Its main office is in Dwingeloo in the Dwingelderveld National Park in the province of Drenthe. ASTRON is part of the institutes organization of the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
Haystack Observatory is a multidisciplinary radio science center, ionospheric observatory, and astronomical microwave observatory owned by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It is in Westford, Massachusetts, in the United States, about 45 kilometers (28 mi) northwest of Boston. The observatory was built by MIT's Lincoln Laboratory for the United States Air Force and was called the Haystack Microwave Research Facility. Construction began in 1960, and the antenna began operating in 1964. In 1970 the facility was transferred to MIT, which then formed the Northeast Radio Observatory Corporation (NEROC) with other universities to operate the site as the Haystack Observatory. As of January 2012, a total of nine institutions participated in NEROC.
Gart Westerhout was a Dutch-American astronomer. Well before completing his university studies at Leiden, he had already become well-established internationally as a radio astronomer in the Netherlands, specializing in studies of radio sources and the Milky Way Galaxy based on observations of radio continuum emissions and 21-cm spectral line radiation that originates in interstellar hydrogen. He emigrated to the United States, became a naturalized citizen, and held a number of important scientific and management positions in academic and government institutions.
The Arecibo Telescope was a 305 m (1,000 ft) spherical reflector radio telescope built into a natural sinkhole at the Arecibo Observatory located near Arecibo, Puerto Rico. A cable-mount steerable receiver and several radar transmitters for emitting signals were mounted 150 m (492 ft) above the dish. Completed in November 1963, the Arecibo Telescope was the world's largest single-aperture telescope for 53 years, until it was surpassed in July 2016 by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in Guizhou, China.
Arthur Edwin Covington was a Canadian physicist who made the first radio astronomy measurements in Canada. Through these he made the valuable discovery that sunspots generate large amounts of microwaves at the 10.7 cm wavelength, offering a simple all-weather method to measure and predict sunspot activity, and their associated effects on communications. The sunspot detection program has run continuously to this day.
Spektr-R was a Russian scientific satellite with a 10 m (33 ft) radio telescope on board. It was launched on 18 July 2011 on a Zenit-3F launcher from Baikonur Cosmodrome, and was designed to perform research on the structure and dynamics of radio sources within and beyond the Milky Way. Together with some of the largest ground-based radio telescopes, the Spektr-R formed interferometric baselines extending up to 350,000 km (220,000 mi).
John O'Sullivan is an Australian engineer.
George Kildare Miley is an Irish-Dutch astronomer. He holds a professorship at Leiden University, where he served as director of Leiden Observatory from 1996 to 2003.
Related media on Commons 
