Haystack Observatory

Overview

The MIT Haystack observatory is about an hour outside of Boston. The dish antenna inside the radome (a golf ball like structure but it only repeats about 3 times) measures 37 meters in diameter (over 100 feet). Scientists operate the giant antenna (dish) in the building under the radome. Many experients take place here, for example: "one of the more impressive ideas presented by the speakers involved masers, which glow inside large molecular clouds. Their use is a very clever way to map movement of the gases in distant nebula and galaxies."

DRAGON helps to provide and maintain a high-speed fiber-optic connection between Haystack and the rest of the world. At the time of this writing, this is a 2.488 Gbps OC-48 SONET connection between Westford, MA and Washington, DC.

Links

• MIT Haystack Observatory — http://www.haystack.edu
• General Information — http://web.haystack.edu/haystack/general.html
• e-VLBI — http://web.haystack.mit.edu/e-vlbi/evlbi_new.html

Pictures