GBT Will Create New Sky Map

Image credit Dave Green.

Jack Singal, a physics professor at the University of Richmond, has received a $589,939 grant from the National Science Foundation to produce the first calibrated map of diffuse radio emission over nearly the entire sky.

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WVU Astrophysicist, Dr. Maura Mclaughlin, presents on behalf of NANOGrav at National Science Foundation (NSF) Meeting

Story by Elizabeth Rhodes

WVU faculty, students and interns watch the live NANOGrav announcement.
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Peculiar Fast Radio Burst Provides Clues to Mysterious Origin

The Green Bank Telescope was able to observe the directional changes of waves from FRB20190520B as viewed through the lens of a massive star’s atmosphere. Image credit: NSF/GBO/P.Vosteen.

Residing in the heart of a dwarf galaxy four billion light years away is a mysterious cosmological object producing bursts of energy that only last a few milliseconds. New research about this Fast Radio Burst (FRB) has revealed a rarely seen astronomical environment around its source, where magnetic fields twist, turn, and undulate over time. This is the first detection of a magnetic field reversal observed from an FRB, and the first time this behavior has been observed in another galaxy.

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Are we alone in the universe? UCLA astronomers enlist the public to find out

Anyone can help classify radio signals from the Green Bank Telescope that could reveal existence of intelligent life elsewhere

Artist’s depiction of Kepler-186f, the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone. A project launched by UCLA scientists will enlist members of the public to identify possible signs of intelligent life elsewhere in our universe. Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle.

Join a community that’s helping UCLA astronomers search for life in the universe using the Green Bank Telescope. UCLA SETI launched a new project to crowdsource the search for extraterrestrial civilizations. (SETI is an acronym for “search for extraterrestrial intelligence.”) 

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New Space Radar Will Hunt Planet-Threatening Asteroids

The new ngRADAR at the Green Bank Telescope offers unprecedented Earth-based views of the solar system

Credit: Kerrick/Getty Images in Scientific American.

When a baseball pitcher throws a fastball, the speed pops up on the jumbotron thanks to radar. The technology is also useful for air traffic control, highway speed traps and weather forecasting—and it’s not reserved for Earth. Astronomers have used radar to probe the planets and asteroids around us, measuring their speed as they whiz around the sun and imaging the details of their surface.

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