Nearly six years after the Arecibo Observatory’s radio telescope collapsed on December 1, 2020, at 7:56 AM, Puerto Rico will again have an instrument for radio astronomy, though on a much smaller scale. The University of Puerto Rico’s Humacao campus announced it will inaugurate the new radio telescope at its Astronomical Observatory on Tuesday, November 17.
Dr. Desireé Cotto Figueroa, director of the campus’s Physics and Electronics Department and coordinator of the Astronomical Observatory, said the project aims to give the campus’s 15 astronomy students alternatives to explore the universe through radio frequency, and will also serve schools and the general community. The project was driven by the Center for Advanced Radio Sciences and Engineering (Carse), directed by professor Rafael Rodríguez Solís, with funding from the National Science Foundation, the same entity that previously subsidized the Arecibo Observatory.
About $100,000 was invested in purchasing and installing the first radio telescope under university control in Puerto Rico. The 3.7-meter dish, bought from the United Kingdom company POAM Electronics, will operate in the L band from one to two GHz. Unlike Arecibo, which could transmit and receive signals, the new instrument is passive, only receiving.
First research will focus on hydrogen lines from celestial objects, the Sun’s spectrum, and signal interference.