Eisenhower Asks Congress For Giant Radio Telescope

President Eisenhower yesterday called for construction of "the nation's first major radio astronomy center," which the University may operate in conjunction with eight other institutions.

A 140-foot radio telescope, the largest on this continent, was asked by Eisenhower as the first step in construction. In his budget message he requested Congress to appropriate $3,500,000 this year to the National Science Foundation for the project.

It was learned yesterday that a huge 500-600 foot radio telescope is under consideration, and that eventual construction costs of the Observatory may run as high as $25-30,000,000.

Bart J. Bok, Robert Wheeler Professor of Applied Astronomy, and Edward M. Purcell, professor of Physics, are now in Washington meeting on the National Science Foundation's advisory panel on radio astronomy. They are discussing details of the project and considering six possible sites in the Appalachians, from the southeast corner of West Virginia through to the western portion of the Carolinas. This area is especially suitable because of its freedom from radio and television interference.

Bok is also chairman of the advisory committee for Associated Universities, Inc., which is completing a study of the proposed project. Associated Universities, which includes Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, M.I.T., Pennsylvania, Princeton, Rochester and Yale, operates Brookhaven National Laboratories for the Atomic Energy Commission.

No Defense Work Planned

The observatory, tentatively known as the Inter-University Observatory, will either be operated by Associated Universities, as seems likely, or by some other private group, and will be open to all qualified astronomers. It will not be operated by the Federal Government, and no classified defense work is contemplated. The observatory would be built by the National Science Foundation because no private institution could afford such an extensive project.

"The United States has been lagging behind in this field recently," Bok commented last night, "and we are very happy that the President has asked this appropriation." The University of Manchester is constructing a 250-foot radio telescope in Jodwell-Banks, England, and one almost as large is under construction in Australia. There is an 80-foot radio telescope in the Netherlands. The largest in the United States is a 50-foot model in Washington.

Bok had no comment on a report that someone from the University would be named to direct the observatory, and he pointed out that no final decisions of that nature would be made until Congress definitely appropriates funds. He hopes that work could begin in the not too distant future, however.

The size of a radio telescope is determined by the diameter of its "dish," a parabolic wire mesh which receives light waves. Radio telescopes have these advantages over optical telescopes: they can be used in daylight and in bad weather, and they "see" through interstellar dust, a factor making them particularly practical for observing the Milky Way. The larger the "dish," the better the definition of the subject observed.

"Harvard has made a major contribution to radio astronomy in this country, a contribution in training and research that provided much of the background for this project," Bok noted. The College Observatory's 60-foot radio telescope, now under construction at Harvard, Mass., will be the largest in the country when it is completed, and a 24-foot model is now in operation there.