Qualla: Reber Radio Telescope

Reber Radio Telescope: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jesse Wright, CC BY 3.0. For most of the years between 1937 and the late 1940s, Grote Reber was the only practicing radio astronomer in the world. He had read Karl Jansky's papers about strange radio waves coming from the Milky Way, and he wanted to follow up. He could not interest any university or observatory in helping him. So in the summer of 1937, in his backyard in Wheaton, Illinois, he built the world's first purpose-built parabolic radio telescope - 31 feet across, 72 radial rafters covered in 26-gauge iron sheeting, mounted on railroad wheels so he could tilt the dish to track sources across the sky. The whole structure now stands at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, where pilgrim radio astronomers come to look at the dish that started everything.

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Image: Jesse Wright | CC BY 3.0

Reber Radio Telescope: An Amateur's Telescope

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jarek Tuszyński, CC BY-SA 3.0. Grote Reber was a 25-year-old radio engineer in Wheaton, Illinois, working at a Chicago-area radio receiver manufacturer when he became interested in Karl Jansky's 1933 discovery of cosmic radio waves. He applied to Bell Labs for a job working under Jansky and was rebuffed. He ap...

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Image: Jarek Tuszyński | CC BY-SA 3.0

Reber Radio Telescope: What He Found in the Backyard Sky

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jarek Tuszyński, CC BY-SA 3.0. Reber spent the next decade conducting the first systematic survey of cosmic radio emissions. He worked at night - radio interference from cars and home appliances during the day swamped his signals. He could not observe the planets, the moon, or even the sun usefully with his eq...

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Image: Jarek Tuszyński | CC BY-SA 3.0

Reber Radio Telescope: Three Moves to Green Bank

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. Reber eventually sold the telescope to the U.S. National Bureau of Standards. The dish was moved from Wheaton to Sterling, Virginia, for further research. When the National Radio Astronomy Observatory took ownership, the telescope was moved again - this time to Boulder, Colorado....

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Image: Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Reber Radio Telescope: A Lineage of Dishes

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jarek Tuszyński, CC BY-SA 3.0. Reber's backyard dish was the prototype for every parabolic radio telescope that followed. The Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank in England, completed in 1957. The 300-foot transit dish at Green Bank, completed in 1962 and collapsed in 1988. The 305-meter Arecibo Telescope in Puer...

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Image: Jarek Tuszyński | CC BY-SA 3.0