A massive, iconic tool for exploring the cosmos went dark on December 1, 2020, as the 900 ton platform of the William E Gordon telescope fell 150 meters from its suspended height into the 305-meter radio dish below. The telescope, which held the title of "world’s largest single dish telescope" from its inception in 1963 until 2016, suffered a series of surprising cable breaks beginning in August 2020 that led to the telescope’s premature dissolution.   + Read More

“Black widows” and “redbacks” were among the eight binary millisecond pulsars (MSPs) “spiders” discovered during a sensitive search using the Arecibo Observatory (AO), as reported in The Astrophysical Journal in March, 2021.

MSPs are highly magnetized remnants of dead stars that spin on their axes in less than 10 milliseconds. Energetic beams of electromagnetic radiation (light) are released from their magnetic poles, which can then be detected by sensitive telescopes like AO. + Read More

STAR Academy has continued stronger than ever, exposing the students to research and participating in seminars offered by experts from different STEM areas. The 30 high school students that were selected for the spring 2021 session have already started to develop their research projects and are being trained in radio-astronomy, planetary radar, space and atmospheric sciences, programming and engineering. Four students and a mentor from the Academy presented their research projects in the 52th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. + Read More

Graduate students at the University of Central Florida (UCF) have the unique opportunity to dive deep into the science, engineering, and operations of the Arecibo Observatory this semester. The Spring 2021 course titled “Arecibo Observatory: Unparalleled Science and Discovery” is a seminar-style course offered by the NASA-funded Center for Lunar and Asteroid Surface Science (CLASS) at UCF and co-sponsored jointly by the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI). + Read More