Arecibo Observatory - Research and Discoveries

Research and Discoveries

Many significant scientific discoveries have been made using the Arecibo telescope. On April 7, 1964, shortly after it began operations, Gordon Pettengill's team used it to determine that the rotation rate of Mercury was not 88 days, as previously thought, but only 59 days. In 1968, the discovery of the periodicity of the Crab Pulsar (33 milliseconds) by Lovelace and others provided the first solid evidence that neutron stars exist. In 1974, Hulse and Taylor discovered the first binary pulsar PSR B1913+16, an accomplishment for which they later received the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1982, the first millisecond pulsar, PSR B1937+21, was discovered by Donald C. Backer, Shrinivas Kulkarni, Carl Heiles, Michael Davis, and Miller Goss. This object spins 642 times per second, and until the discovery of PSR J1748-2446ad in 2005, it was the fastest-spinning pulsar known.

In August 1989, the observatory directly imaged an asteroid for the first time in history: 4769 Castalia. The following year, Polish astronomer Aleksander Wolszczan made the discovery of pulsar PSR B1257+12, which later led him to discover its three orbiting planets and a possible comet. These were the first extra-solar planets discovered. In 1994, John Harmon used the Arecibo radio telescope to map the distribution of ice in the poles of Mercury.

In January 2008, detection of prebiotic molecules methanimine and hydrogen cyanide were reported from Arecibo Observatory radio spectroscopy measurements of the distant starburst galaxy Arp 220.