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A comment on A new era for Arecibo: legendary observatory begins next phase. Parent comment

Re:A new era for Arecibo: legendary observatory begins next ... by ben_w on Friday September 29, 2023 @02:13PM (#37708093)
You're kinda both right; the dish itself was fixed, but the system as a whole still had limited steerability because it was (spherical?) instead of parabolic, allowing 20° of the zenith.

This was still a lot more limited than the horizon-to-horizon of the other iconic radio telescope type: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CSIRO_ScienceImage_8...

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Re:A new era for Arecibo: legendary observatory begins next ... by whatshisface on Friday September 29, 2023 @09:03PM (#37711914)
The competition for giant Arecibo-like telescopes is arrays, and since their cross section goes to zero as you turn them towards the horizon (straight up and they're spaced out, from the horizon they're in a line), they are limited within some reasonable range of the zenith as well.
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