The 45-foot Telescope was built in the early 1970s as a fourth element of the Green Bank Interferometer. It was originally located on the Hunterville site about 20 miles (35 km) south of Green Bank. One claim to fame is that it was used in 1973 and 1974 to find Sagittarius A*—the strong radio source produced by gas swirling around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The 45-foot was later moved to the Green Bank site and is now being used to take radio spectra of solar radio bursts during daylight hours (mirror site link) and as a tracking station for Orbiting VLBI that uses a space-based radio telescope (or more) in conjunction with ground-based radio telescopes to create very high-resolution images.
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last updated: September 4, 2011