The Hat Creek Radio Observatory (HCRO) is operated by

SRI International SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic ...

in the

Western United States The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the We ...

. The observatory is home to the Allen Telescope Array designed and owned by the

SETI Institute The SETI Institute is a not-for-profit research organization incorporated in 1984 whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to use this knowledge to inspire and guide present and futu ...

in Mountain View, CA.

Location

Hat Creek Radio Observatory is located approximately northeast of

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

at an elevation of 986 m (3235 ft) above

Sea Level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardise ...

Hat Creek, California Hat Creek is a census designated place (CDP) in Shasta County, California. Hat Creek is situated at an elevation of 3,422 feet (1,043 m). Its population is 266 as of the 2020 census, down from 309 from the 2010 census. Hat Creek is located 2 ...

(in

Shasta County Shasta County (), officially the County of Shasta, is a county in the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its population is 182,155 as of the 2020 census, up from 177,223 from the 2010 census. The county seat is Redding. Shasta ...

). Latitude: 40° 49' 03" N; longitude: 121° 28' 24" W. The nearest large city to Hat Creek is Redding, California on highway I-5.

History

HCRO was founded in the late 1950s by the newly created

Radio Astronomy Laboratory The Radio Astronomy Lab (RAL) is an Organized Research Unit (ORU) within the Astronomy Department at the University of California, Berkeley. It was founded by faculty member Harold Weaver in 1958. Until 2012, RAL maintained a radio astronomy observ ...

(an Organized Research Unit of the Astronomy Department at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

). An 85-foot antenna was installed in 1962 and operated until 1993, when it collapsed during a wind storm. Using it, astronomers discovered the first

astrophysical maser An astrophysical maser is a naturally occurring source of stimulated spectral line emission, typically in the microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. This emission may arise in molecular clouds, comets, planetary atmospheres, stellar at ...

. The university managed the facility until 2012, when SRI International assumed site management."UC Berkeley Passes Management Of Allen Telescope Array To SRI", Space Daily, April 19, 201

/ref> The earliest experiments in millimeter-wave astronomy were performed at this site starting in the 1970s when a 2-element interferometer was constructed. From 1980-1985 a 3-element interferometer was constructed, with another four antennas added between 1990-1992. After the 85-foot dish was lost, another three antennas were added to the millimeter array for a total of 10 elements. This came to be known as

BIMA Bima (Indonesia: ''Kota Bima'') is a city on the eastern coast of the island of Sumbawa in central Indonesia's province West Nusa Tenggara. It is the largest city on the island of Sumbawa, with a population of 142,443 at the 2010 census and 155,1 ...

. The BIMA telescopes were moved in the spring of 2005 to be combined with other millimeter antennas as part of the

Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy The Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA) was an astronomical instrument comprising 23 radio telescopes, dedicated in 2006. These telescopes formed an astronomical interferometer where all the signals are combined in a ...

(CARMA) project and to make way for the Allen Telescope Array (ATA). Image:ATA350-render.jpg, Artist Rendering of completed ATA-350 Image:CARMA_Panoramic_cropped2.jpg, CARMA in D-array

References

External links

SRI International websiteSETI Institute websiteHat Creek Radio Observatory Webpage
(Includes tour and contact info.)
Construction site satellite image from Google Maps
{{Portal bar, California, Astronomy, Stars, Spaceflight, Outer space, Solar System, Education, Science Astronomical observatories in California Buildings and structures in Shasta County, California Tourist attractions in Shasta County, California University of California, Berkeley SRI International