Allen Telescope Array Update

Executive: "We must confess that your proposal seems less like science and more like science fiction."

Ellie Arroway: Science fiction. You're right, it's crazy. In fact, it's even worse than that, it's nuts. You wanna hear something really nutty? I heard of a couple guys who wanna build something called an airplane, you know you get people to go in, and fly around like birds, it's ridiculous, right?

And what about breaking the sound barrier, or rockets to the moon? Atomic energy, or a mission to Mars? Science fiction, right? Look, all I'm asking is for you to just have the tiniest bit of vision. You know, to just sit back for one minute and look at the big picture. To take a chance on something that just might end up being the most profoundly impactful moment for humanity, for the history ... of history.

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...Initial observations with the ATA will begin later this year with an array of 42 dishes spread out over an area of roughly 300 by 200 meters. When combined, they will form up to sixteen beams with an angular resolution similar to the Arecibo antenna and with the sensitivity of the NRAO 140 Foot (both antennas were used in Project Phoenix). We’ll also have one correlator available. It will process the signals from the dishes to form an image with nearly three thousand pixels. Each pixel will be captured in more than a thousand radio “colors,” this radio spectrum shows the amount of radio emission at different frequencies. At a frequency of 1420 MHz, the frequency emitted by hydrogen atoms, the correlator will image a circular area of 2.5 degrees, five times the angular width of the Moon...

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