The One Hectare Telescope

Subject: News on 1HT Rapid Prototype Array (RPA) inauguration
Date: Thursday, April 20, 2000 8:44 AM

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000419/sc/seti_telescope_1.html

Wednesday April 19, 2000 5:39 PM ET 

Search for Alien Life Gets Boost

By WILLIAM SCHIFFMANN, Associated Press Writer 

LAFAYETTE, Calif. (AP) - With a whir of electric motors,
seven satellite dishes swung as one Wednesday, pointing blindly
into space in the first demonstration of technology scientists hope
will let them eavesdrop on intelligent civilizations thousands of
light-years in space.

The dishes are the prototype of what is being called the One 
Hectare Telescope (1HT), a joint project of the SETI Institute - 
for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence - and the University 
of California, Berkeley.

By 2005, the project could include as many as 1,000 of the 6-meter 
dishes on 21/2 acres near Mount Lassen in the rugged hills of 
Northern California. The dishes, synchronized to shift together, 
will collect signals from space.

The price tag is a relative pittance as scientific endeavors go. 
At a news conference in the wooded hills above this wealthy enclave 
25 miles east of San Francisco, the institute's executive director, 
Thomas Pierson, set the bill at about $25 million.

``We've always wondered as a human species - are we alone?'' he said.

So how do the dishes do their job? While optical telescopes
use mirrors or lenses to collect light to create a visible image,
a radio telescope focuses faint radio waves onto a receiver,
much like the one in your stereo system, which amplifies
them so they are detectable.

``We want to build for the first time, an instrument that takes 
hundreds of commercial satellite dishes and build one of the 
largest radio telescopes in the world,'' said Dr. Leo Blitz,
director of the UC Berkeley Radio Astronomy Laboratory.

''(If we succeed) we will have made one of the major discoveries 
of the common era, or we will find out how alone we really are. 
In either case, we will have succeeded in learning something 
important about our place in the Universe,'' he said.

Plans first call for a look at 1,000 relatively close stars similar 
to our Sun, then the project will move on to peer first at 100,000 
and then a million sun-like stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

The project began 40 years ago, and for many years was funded through 
NASA. But in 1993, Congress cut the cash flow and SETI has been 
financed privately ever since.

The seven dishes, which were shown to the public for the first time 
Wednesday, won't be searching the heavens in earnest. Instead, they 
will be used to solve a variety of scientific and technical challenges 
linked to what scientists called the ``back end'' of the telescope. 
That includes developing methods for dealing with interference, 
especially from orbiting satellites.

Also under study will be the drive systems that aim the dishes, the 
software that directs the drives and early versions of a device called 
the digital beamformer, which will allow the telescope to observe 
multiple stars and other radio astronomical sources at the same time.

Once completed, the telescope will be the largest array in the world 
dedicated solely to searching for signs of intelligent life elsewhere 
in the Universe. It will be comparable to the Very Large Array (VLA) 
in New Mexico, the world's premier instrument for radio astronomy.

By adding additional dishes, the telescope can be easily and economically
expanded.

Dr. Jill C. Tartar [sp], director of SETI research and the inspiration 
for the Jodie Foster character [Ellie Arroway was more Carl Sagan than
anyone else.] in the movie ``Contact,'' was delighted as the dishes 
were demonstrated.

``We just can't wait to get started,'' she said. 

Image and Caption:

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/ap/20000419/us/seti_telescope.html

Tom Pierson, executive director of the SETI (Search for Extra-
Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute, discusses a prototype telescope 
unveiled Wednesday, April 19, 2000 in Lafayette, Calif. that will 
help researchers look for alien civilizations. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) 

Also see the Berkeley Press Release at this URL:

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2000/04/19_seti.html

And from The SETI Institute, with images of the RPA and 1HT included:

http://www.seti-inst.edu/general/rpa_pr/index.htm