High Definition Wallpapers

September 9th, 2014

Arecibo Telescope

We take a slightly different turn with our Space theme today: this image is very much down to Earth. It’s the famous 1000 foot radio telescope in Arecibo, Peurto Rico. This is the largest single-aperture telescope in the world and has been gathering vitally useful scientific data for decades now. It’s achieved many firsts: it […]

Arecibo Telescope

We take a slightly different turn with our Space theme today: this image is very much down to Earth. It’s the famous 1000 foot radio telescope in Arecibo, Peurto Rico. This is the largest single-aperture telescope in the world and has been gathering vitally useful scientific data for decades now. It’s achieved many firsts: it was the first to discover an extrasolar planet, in 1990. It discovered that the planet Mercury rotates in only 59 days, not the 88 previously thought. It was also the source of the first deliberate attempt to contact other life forms: a 1679 bit message was beamed to the globular cluster M13 in 1974. However, don’t expect a response anytime soon: it’ll take the signal 25,000 years to reach M13. That’s what I call a long-distance message. This picture shows the entire dish, nestled amongst the hills, and it makes a fantastic wallpaper for astronomers.

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