Legacy
In honor of Jansky, the unit used by radio astronomers for the strength (or flux density) of radio sources is the jansky (1 Jy = 10−26 W m−2 Hz−1). The crater Jansky on the Moon is also named after him. The NRAO postdoctoral fellowship program is named after Karl Jansky. Additionally, NRAO awards the Jansky Prize annually in Jansky's honor. On January 10, 2012, the NRAO announced the Very Large Array (VLA) would be renamed to the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in honor of Karl Janksy's contribution to Radio Astronomy.
A full-scale replica of Jansky's original rotating telescope is located on the grounds of the NRAO site (38°25′53.9″N 79°48′58.5″W / 38.431639°N 79.81625°W / 38.431639; -79.81625) in Green Bank, West Virginia, near a reconstructed version of Grote Reber's 9-meter dish.
The original site of Jansky's antenna (40°21′54.5″N 74°09′48.9″W / 40.365139°N 74.163583°W / 40.365139; -74.163583) at what is now the vacant Bell Labs Holmdel Complex at 101 Crawfords Corner Road, Holmdel, New Jersey, was determined by Tony Tyson and Robert Wilson of Lucent Technologies (the successor of Bell Telephone Laboratories) in 1998, and a monument and plaque were placed there to honor the achievement. The monument is a stylized sculpture of the antenna and is oriented as Jansky's antenna was at 7:10 p.m. on September 16, 1932, at a moment of maximum signal caused by alignment with the center of our galaxy in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius.
Jansky noise is named after Jansky, and refers to high frequency static disturbances of cosmic origin.
Jansky was a resident of Little Silver, New Jersey, and died at age 44 in a Red Bank, New Jersey, hospital (now called Riverview Medical Center) due to a heart condition.
Read more about this topic: Karl Guthe Jansky
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“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)