50th Anniversary of the Arecibo Observatory

Post date: Oct 21, 2013 9:15:38 PM

The Arecibo Observatory (AO) was inaugurated November 1, 1963. To recognize its 50th year of service to the scientific community, the AO is having a science symposium, 50 Years of Scientific Achievement and Future Directions at Arecibo Observatory, at the Angel Ramos Foundation Visitor Center. The event will be held Monday & Tuesday, October 28-29, 2013, beginning at 8:30 AM each day. Current and past users of the William E. Gordon telescope and other scientific equipment, as well as leaders of its Education and Outreach programs are invited.

Symposium Webcast via UStream

Symposium Agenda

Day 1: Monday, October 28, 2013

07:30 AM    Breakfast

08:30 AM    Welcome and Key Note 1: Arecibo: A personal history and future directions — Rich Behnke

09:00 AM    Key Note 2: Evolution of the William E. Gordon 305 m — Don Campbell

09:30 AM    Key Note 3: From Appleton to Arecibo and Beyond — John Matthews

10:00 AM    Break

10:30 AM    Whistler wave interaction experiments at Arecibo Observatory — Min-Chang Lee

10:45 AM    Understanding Pulsars with Arecibo, Past, Present & Future — Joanna Rankin

11:00 AM    Arecibo Observatory: A Long Life with Very Long Baselines — Leonid Gurvits

11:15 AM    Exploration of Atmosphere and Geospace with LIDAR — Xinzhao Chu

11:30 AM    Key Note 4: Living and working with the Arecibo radio telescope — Alex Wolszczan

12:00 PM    50ish Years of SETI at Arecibo — Dan Wertheimer

12:15 PM    Arecibo-Mini-RF Bistatic Observations of the Moon — Ben Bussey (presented by Lynn Carter)

12:30 PM    LUNCH

01:15 PM    Key Note 5: My Love Affair with Arecibo— Carl Heiles

01:45 PM    Achieving electron temperature measurements using the plasma line of incoherent scatter — Mike Sulzer

02:00 PM    Zeeman Splitting in High-Latitude Molecular Clouds — Allison Smith

02:15 PM    The Arecibo Airglow Observatory or Photometer Shack - Which was it? — John Meriwether and Fred Herrero

02:30 PM    Searching for almost nothing in the 21cm line — Jay Lockman

02:45 PM    The ALFA Ultra Deep Survey — Wolfram Freudling

03:00 PM    Lower thermospheric wind estimates from dual-beam incoherent scatter radar measurements — Dave Hysell

03:15 PM    Break

03:45 PM    Key Note 6: Arecibo Observatory: Lab in the Sky Ionosphere Challenges - Then and Now — Herb Carlson

04:15 PM    From MM to MMXII - raising Arecibo's sensitivity to the next level — Ganesh Rajagopalan

04:30 PM    Penn State Software-Defined Radar Research at Arecibo: Initiatives and Challenges — Julio Urbina

04:45 PM    The New Arecibo HF Facility Dual Array Cassegrain Antenna — Jim Breakall

05:00 PM    Ammann & Whitney's History with the Telescope — Jim Gould

05:15 PM    Early Ionospheric Experiments at the Arecibo Observatory — A. J. Ferraro

05:30 PM    The Life and Times of the Mini-Gregorian — Loris Magnani

05:45 PM    ASAP Group Discussion on AO Future

06:30 PM    Dinner

                Key Note After Dinner — Sheldon Reynolds 

Day 2: Tuesday, October 29, 2013

07:30 AM    Breakfast

08:30 AM    Key Note 7: A Butterfly Fluttered Its Wings, And Lo! - A Great Observatory Emerged!- Frank Drake

09:00 AM    The Arecibo Remote Command Center — Rick Jenet

09:15 AM    Observing the full incoherent scatter spectrum with the Arecibo radar — Asti Bhatt

09:30 AM    A new era of tests of general relativity with Arecibo — Paulo Freire

09:45 AM    Accurate Arecibo Decimetre Flux Densities from the Solar System to the Edge of the Universe — Dave Jauncey

10:00 AM    From Dead to Habitable Exoplanets at Arecibo — Abel Méndez

10:15 AM    GoldenEye's view of the ISM in the Milky Way — Snezana Stanimirovic

10:30 AM    Break

11:00 AM    Key Note 8: Planetary Geology with the Arecibo radar: Impacts and Explosive Volcanism — Lynn Carter

11:30 AM    50 years of lunar observation — Tommy Thompson

11:45 AM    Near-Earth Asteroid Radar Extravaganza — Lance Benner

12:00 PM    Planetary Radar Observations at Arecibo: Current Work and Future Directions — Mike Nolan

12:15 PM    Radio Spectroscopy of Comets — Amy Lovell

12:30 PM    Reflections on Arecibo by a (Non-Radio) Astronomer — Jonathan Lunine

12:45 PM    Lunch

01:30 PM    Key Note 9: Reflections on Discovery of the First Binary Pulsar — Joe Taylor

02:00 PM    Measuring the rise and fall times of HF-induced irregularities at Arecibo in the 1980s — Anthea Coster

02:15 PM    The Arecibo Galactic Environments Survey — Robert Minchin

02:30 PM    Innovating Airglow - Facilitating the Aeronomy Ecosystem — John Noto

02:45 PM    The Crab Pulsar: Enigmas — Tim Hankins

03:00 PM    New, uniquely sensitive AO + DRAO images - gateway to another Arecibo future — Phil Kronberg

03:15 PM    Plans for an HF imaging Array in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico — Brett Isham

03:30 PM    Break

04:00 PM    A VLBI Resolution of the Pleiades Distance Controversy — Carl Melis

04:15 PM    The Magnificent Magnetic Mysterium Megamasers! — Tim Robishaw

04:30 PM    The ALFA Zone of Avoidance Survey — Travis McIntyre

04:45 PM    Arecibo and the renaissance of meteor aeronomy — Lars Dyrud

05:00 PM    Gravitational Waves at Arecibo — Andrea Lommen

05:15 PM    Boston University Aeronomy Research at the Arecibo Observatory — Steve Smith

05:30 PM    Key Note 10: Gas and Galaxies – Arecibo’s contributions over the past 50 years — Karen O'Neil

06:00 PM    Depart

Press Contact

José (Tony) Acevedo

Public Relations & Communications, Arecibo Observatory

Tel. (787) 878.2612 x228

Email: jacevedo@naic.edu