Mercury,
March/April 2005 Table of Contents
by
John Avant
"We
see PARI filling a very important role in astronomy research and
education," said Don Cline, PARI's president and the man most
responsible for its existence. "The cost of research-grade
radio telescopes is so large that colleges and universities in the
U. S. can't afford individually to build and support such instruments.
We are making these instruments available to scientists and students
who otherwise would not have access to this kind of opportunity."
Cline
notes that radio astronomy research has been heavily concentrated
at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). "The NRAO
is highly successful and provides cutting edge research facilities
for American radio astronomers. However, the long-term success of
the NRAO, and radio astronomy in general, will depend upon the next
generation of radio astronomers. That's PARI's mission. We can give
them the hands-on experience with instruments and research tasks
they simply can't get anywhere else."
Cline
added that PARI can fulfill another important role, "providing
an opportunity for researchers to try unconventional ideas. We can
provide the unique opportunity to use radio and optical telescopes
concurrently over a long period of time."
To
accomplish its mission, PARI can point to an impressive array of
instruments and facilities. The 200-acre campus is located about
thirty miles southwest of Asheville, North Carolina, and contains
thirty buildings with more than 100,000 square feet of floor space.
Most of it is currently waiting to be used. In addition to the two
26-meter (85 ft.) radio telescopes, scientific instruments include
a 12.2 meter (40 ft.) radio telescope housed in a radome, a 4.6
meter (15 ft.) radio telescope (dubbed "Smiley" and operated
by high school students), a high frequency Jupiter-Io/solar antenna,
six optical telescopes on the PARI Optical Ridge, three weather
and atmospheric monitoring stations and various environmental monitoring
instruments.
How
all this came to be situated in the vast expanses of the half-million
acre Pisgah National Forest is a story that has added an element
of mystery to the site.
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