Effelsberg

I went to see the Effelsberg 100-m radio telescope Saturday morning. There isn't much to say about it, but I thought I'd toss up a few photos.

In the photo, it looks like a tiny dish pretty close, but probably less than half the distance to the trees next to it. It's ginormous. I noticed you can see it from a nearby village (wonder what the neighbors think of that view?).


Closer, but still not very close.


The back side of the dish and some of the structure.


We put on hardhats and went up to the platform where the motor that changes the altitude is (the bottom of the black arc on the picture above). You can see all the way down. The telescope sits on four of those red 'feet' (for comparison you can see someone standing not too far from it) and spins around on a track. When the telescope was moving, and the clouds were moving pretty fast, it was kind of disorienting.


The control room is that entire glass wall (with nice view of the telescope from there).


Effelsberg is also a LOFAR site. Not too impressive, is it?