The Green Bank Telescope (GBT) is the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope and the world’s largest land-based movable structure. It is part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) site at Green Bank, West Virginia, USA. NRAO is located in the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000 mile zone where all radio transmissions are either limited or banned outright, to help the telescope function properly.
With the growing popularity of radio-array telescopes, the GBT may end up being the last single-dish telescope of its kind built in the world. Motherboard traveled to this remote part of West Virginia to investigate one of the last remaining vestiges of single dish big science and the people who are fighting for it.
Source: Vice, Spaced Out – The Silent Dish