Dr. Alex Wolszczan, who is a professor at Penn State and a long-term user, visited the Arecibo Observatory during the week of March 4th, 2019 as part of an observing campaign to search for radio emission from cool brown dwarfs.

During this visit, Alex spoke about the possibility of detecting such planets via flaring radio emission and about detecting planets around pulsars through precision timing. He also talked about Jupiter-Io like emission from compact planetary systems, and plans to search for such flaring events from low-mass stars, brown dwarfs, and white dwarfs. Read More

The National Science Foundation has awarded a team of scientists $5.8 million to design and mount a supersensitive antenna at the focal point of the Arecibo Observatory’s 1,000-foot-diameter dish, which is managed by the University of Central Florida. The antenna, called a phased-array feed, will increase the telescope’s observation capabilities 500 percent. Read More

The Arecibo Observatory helped scientists demonstrate that Einstein’s theory of relativity applies even to objects with extreme gravity, such as neutron stars.

Imagine being able to see a flea on the surface of Pluto. That’s a good way to describe what the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico helped a group of Canadian researchers do. Read More