Five Decades of Groundbreaking Millimeter Astronomy—From Discovering Molecules in Space to Imaging New Solar Systems

Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) have awarded the 2023 Karl G. Jansky Lectureship to Dr. Paul A. Vanden Bout, Senior Scientist, Emeritus at NRAO. The Jansky Lectureship is an honor established by the trustees of AUI to recognize outstanding contributions to the advancement of radio astronomy.

(more…)

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.
(more…)

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.

(more…)

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

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).
(more…)

Green Bank Observatory Science Newsletter, Winter 2022

(more…)