New Space Radar Will Hunt Planet-Threatening Asteroids

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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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Scientists Reveal Secrets to Burping Black Hole with the Green Bank Telescope

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The National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT) has revealed new information about mysterious radio bubbles surrounding a supermassive black hole.  

Observations by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (left image) and by GBO’s MUSTANG-2 instrument (right image) clearly show the enormous cavities (highlighted with gray circles) excavated by the powerful radio jets (green contours) expelled from the black hole at the center of galaxy cluster MS0735. The green contours in both images are from observations performed by the Naval Research Laboratory’s VLA Low-band Ionosphere and Transient Experiment (VLITE) back end used on the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (NRAO) Very Large Array (VLA).
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Green Bank Observatory Science Newsletter, Winter 2022

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Observatory Scientists Share Latest Research

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Our scientists are in demand! Several are being featured on podcasts and other digital media.

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WPHS Astronomy Students Present On World Stage

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Wheeling Middle School science teacher Debbie McKay, left, and two former students — Wheeling Park High School freshman Brooke Sikole and sophomore Josie Long — reflect on their recent trip to Honolulu and the 2020 American Astronomical Society Conference. The students presented to the world scholars findings on their research on determining the size of pulsars.

Two Wheeling Middle School astronomy students reached for the stars two years ago to learn about pulsars, and this month they presented the results of their research to the world’s scientific community in Honolulu.

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