PARI: Where Science Excites the Imagination

Mercury, March/April 2005 Table of Contents

Courtesy PARI.

by John Avant

"We see PARI filling a very important role in astronomy research and education," said Don Cline, PARI's president and the man most responsible for its existence. "The cost of research-grade radio telescopes is so large that colleges and universities in the U. S. can't afford individually to build and support such instruments. We are making these instruments available to scientists and students who otherwise would not have access to this kind of opportunity."

Cline notes that radio astronomy research has been heavily concentrated at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). "The NRAO is highly successful and provides cutting edge research facilities for American radio astronomers. However, the long-term success of the NRAO, and radio astronomy in general, will depend upon the next generation of radio astronomers. That's PARI's mission. We can give them the hands-on experience with instruments and research tasks they simply can't get anywhere else."

Cline added that PARI can fulfill another important role, "providing an opportunity for researchers to try unconventional ideas. We can provide the unique opportunity to use radio and optical telescopes concurrently over a long period of time."

To accomplish its mission, PARI can point to an impressive array of instruments and facilities. The 200-acre campus is located about thirty miles southwest of Asheville, North Carolina, and contains thirty buildings with more than 100,000 square feet of floor space. Most of it is currently waiting to be used. In addition to the two 26-meter (85 ft.) radio telescopes, scientific instruments include a 12.2 meter (40 ft.) radio telescope housed in a radome, a 4.6 meter (15 ft.) radio telescope (dubbed "Smiley" and operated by high school students), a high frequency Jupiter-Io/solar antenna, six optical telescopes on the PARI Optical Ridge, three weather and atmospheric monitoring stations and various environmental monitoring instruments.

How all this came to be situated in the vast expanses of the half-million acre Pisgah National Forest is a story that has added an element of mystery to the site.

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