Radio telescope
Aradio telescopeis a type ofantennaused forradio astronomy.The majority look like a hugesatellite televisiondish. Stars shine, and the light can be seen with an ordinarytelescope,but they also give offradio waves.Scientistswith radio telescopes receive these radio waves and usecomputersto learn about the stars. Other things likeblack holesalso give off radio waves, and radio telescopes are useful for learning about them too.
The dish is sometimes constructed of aconductivewire mesh whose openings are smaller than a wavelength. The information received by several radio telescopes in different places can be combined. This gives similar results to having a single dish as big as the distance between the telescopes. It can receive very faint signals, and see more details. The biggest telescope is a virtual radio telescope almost as big as the Earth, called the Event Horizon Telescope.
The radio telescope at theParkes Observatory,Parkes, New South Waleswas used byNASAto receive messages from theApollo 11moon landings.
