Arecibo

[RobertI]

[wulfrun]

900 tons falling 450 feet - I bet there was some bang from that. Tragic loss, a very sad day but as said above, not unexpected. Doesn't look like it will or could be rebuilt either. Good job there was some suspicion and it wasn't unexpected, so at least no-one's hurt.

Edited December 1, 2020 by wulfrun

[John]

Imagine the "For Sale" advert

- some signs of wear from normal use but some TLC will soon sort these out.

- buyer must make own carriage arrangements.

- buyer to provide suitable topography for mounting the instrument.

- strictly no returns ......

 

[LukeSkywatcher]

55 yrs old.  Maybe ET destroyed it to stop us looking.

Edited December 2, 2020 by LukeSkywatcher

[RobertI]

6 hours ago, John said:

Imagine the "For Sale" advert

- some signs of wear from normal use but some TLC will soon sort these out.

- buyer must make own carriage arrangements.

- buyer to provide suitable topography for mounting the instrument.

- strictly no returns ......

 

Perhaps a DIY ‘fixer upper’ project for some billionaire amateur astronomer?

[Peter Drew]

Sad as it is for science, spare a thought for the local community for which the telescope was a huge economic benefit through tourism and services.  Many livelihoods will have been affected as well as those of the scientific elite.        ☹️

[badhex]

9 hours ago, John said:

Imagine the "For Sale" advert

Maybe it will become part of @FLO's Black Friday sale!

Seriously though, a huge loss for astronomy and Puerto Rico. Arecibo was on my fantasy list of observatories to visit. The one silver lining is that they had not decided to repair it and had people working on it at the time of collapse.  

 

Edited December 2, 2020 by badhex

[gilesco]

It collapsed completely overnight:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55147973

[Nik271]

Sad news  At least it proves that the previous assessment that it was too dangerous to fix was correct.

[OutThereSomewhere]

21 hours ago, LukeSkywatcher said:

The huge radio telescope build kind of into the landscape?. Oh, I see now in the top image. It was the top of it collapsed into the dish. 

 

I think it was  one of the cables supporting the dish off the ground that snapped first. The whole thing, including dish, was suspended off the ground.

[Zermelo]

On 01/12/2020 at 15:44, Moonshed said:

It’s so sad to see, as you say an iconic structure, collapse to the ground, like saying goodbye to an old friend.

"See these arms that were broken
How they held you so"

OK, cables rather than arms, but you don't get many songs about telescopes to choose from.

This will probably be opaque to anyone under 45.

[Moonshed]

6 hours ago, Zermelo said:

"See these arms that were broken
How they held you so"

OK, cables rather than arms, but you don't get many songs about telescopes to choose from.

This will probably be opaque to anyone under 45.

Being a fair bit older than 45 I remember well Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, a great group in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s.

I can’t resist  adding the next verse.

We're just waiting, looking skyward
As the days come down
Someone promised there'd be answers
If we stayed around.

[Icosahedron]

Ancient technology indeed.

[LukeSkywatcher]

55 yrs old. All that time looking for E.T.

I guess we can all delete SETI@home off of our computers.

[david_taurus83]

Footage of the collapse.

https://youtu.be/b3AASKr_iHc

[Paul M]

35 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

Footage of the collapse.

https://youtu.be/b3AASKr_iHc

Wow! Explosive! It looks like failure of the cables/anchors was expected. Some tension in those cables, it all just disintegrated once the loads became imbalanced.

I'm not sure I'd have walked out to that focal cage at any time in its history. 

 

 

[JamesF]

Horrible to watch :(

James

[wulfrun]

Very painful to watch, especially as it's also fascinating - you almost feel guilty watching a mighty structure collapse. Looks from the drone footage that one or two wires ping and that triggers the total failure, it must have been teetering on the brink prior. Just glad it was a drone, the whip from those wire ropes could have gone in any direction.

[markse68]

Why did they have a drone out filming it- pure chance or was it a planned demolition?

Mark

[wulfrun]

8 hours ago, markse68 said:

Why did they have a drone out filming it- pure chance or was it a planned demolition?

Mark

It may have been in use for inspection and just coincidence it was there - it'd be an ideal, safe way to see what the state is. The footage looks very steady and zooms out a long way, it may even be mis-labelled and a remote CCTV of some sort and not actually a drone, who knows. Whichever, it's interesting how it shows the sequence of the failures pretty clearly.

[Louis D]

Embedding above video:

 

[Louis D]

On the bright side, the Chinese stepped up a few years back and built an even bigger radio telescope of similar design.

Still, sad to see a famous old radio telescope go in such a horrible fashion.

[Seelive]

As far as I'm aware, unfortunately the Chinese telescope doesn't have the RADAR capability that Arecibo had.

[Neil H]