Fifty kilometers southwest of Asheville in the woods of western North Carolina, an abandoned satellite tracking station is finding new life observing heavenly objects of a different sort. Originally used by NASA for monitoring early space flights in the 1960s, then for National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence-gathering operations, the station’s transformation into a radio observatory is now nearly complete. The nonprofit Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI) plans to boost educational astronomy programs in the area and eventually host visiting astronomers.
Facilities include a 4.6-meter, 12-meter, and two 26-meter radio telescopes, and a new 0.2-meter optical telescope. Among the paraphernalia that PARI got with its purchase of the old spy station were part of a sophisticated security system; some bulletproof windows; a tunnel; a paper shredding building; and a bunkerlike, white noise-producing conference room. In total, the site has about two dozen buildings.
The National Forest Service had planned to bulldoze the site, after being stuck with expensive maintenance since NSA abandoned it in 1995. But then Don Cline, a retired computer executive, stepped in. He bought other land, organized a swap with the Forest Service, and in early 1999 founded PARI—a several-million dollar investment that the institute will need to supplement with grants and donations. “It was a last ditch effort to save some very useful astronomy equipment,” Cline says.
The telescopes were in good shape, but to make astronomical observations, their tracking rate had to be slowed to the speed of Earth’s rotation. That, says Mike Castelaz, PARI’s only full-time astronomer, was quite a challenge. “It was all analog electronics, and they were going three degrees a second.” One of the 26-meter antennas has now been overhauled and can observe pulsars at 73 cm, the galaxy’s background hydrogen radiation at 21 cm, and methanol lines from masers at 4.5 and 2.4 cm. The other large dish will be upgraded this summer, with the hope of eventually hooking the two together into an interferometer.
Education will be a major focus: About 30 undergraduate physics departments and even more primary and secondary schools are within a few hours’ drive of the institute. PARI has purchased a portable planetarium, will host undergraduate research students this summer, and is planning continuing education workshops for teachers. And starting this spring, K–12 school groups will operate the 4.6-meter radio telescope via the Internet.
David Moffett, a radio astronomer at Furman University in South Carolina, plans to use the 26-meter telescope as a demonstration tool for undergraduate research. They’ll monitor the brightest pulsars in the sky as well as observing masers. “It’s an important resource because it’s close,” says Moffett. “It isn’t cutting edge, but it’s cutting edge for an undergraduate institution that doesn’t have access to major facilities.”
Telescopes turn their eyes from surveillance to science at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute near Asheville, North Carolina.
Telescopes turn their eyes from surveillance to science at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute near Asheville, North Carolina.
