100M Radio Telescope Effelsberg: The first 50 years

The 100m Radio Telescope Effelsberg, an SKA pathfinder facility, turns 50 in 2021. The inauguration of the telescope took place on 12 May 1971, and for 30 years it was the largest fully steerable radio telescope on Earth. With its constant improvements and upgrades it is still one of the most powerful dishes around.

In its history, the 100m telescope has produced a number of important results. These include the first proofs of extragalactic water and ammonia, while observations of different transitions of the ammonia molecule helped to establish a “cosmic thermometer” for molecular clouds. Polarisation observations established the existence of regular large-scale magnetic fields in galaxies beyond our own Milky Way.

The radio map of the full sky at 408 MHz (below), based on observations with Effelsberg, the 76m Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank (next to SKAO Global Headquarters) and the 64m Parkes telescope in Australia, became an iconic image of astronomy as a whole. More recently, a map of the complete northern sky in the light of neutral hydrogen (HI) was published, combining Effelsberg and Parkes data to reveal the whole sky in the light of neutral hydrogen (the allsky survey HI4PI).

The all-sky survey at 408 MHz (C.G.T. Haslam et al. 1982, A&AS 47, 1), observed with the 100m telescope together with the telescopes at Jodrell Bank in the UK and Parkes in Australia.

Exploring the extremes of the cosmos, intraday variability (IDV) of active galactic nuclei was observed for the first time. The telescope’s observations of binary pulsars established the existence of relativistic spin-precession in strong gravitational fields. Effelsberg discovered normal and millisecond pulsars as well as an extremely highly magnetised pulsar (a magnetar) near the Galactic Centre.

The telescope was part of the first intercontinental Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) experiment in 1973 – only two years after its inauguration – and today it remains a crucial part of the European, global and mm-VLBI networks.

Recently, Space-VLBI observations including Effelsberg and other ground-based radio dishes set a world record in spatial resolution – the level of detail discernable in an image – of 11 micro-arcseconds. That’s like viewing a two-cent Euro coin (slightly smaller than a UK and US penny) on the surface of the Moon.

Fitted with modern receivers (several wide-band, multi-pixel systems, and a phased array feed), state-of-the art data acquisition systems and constant upgrades, the telescope has evolved into something far superior to what it was 50 years ago. As such it continues to be an active SKA pathfinder.

The 100m telescope was also one of a number of radio telescopes supporting NASA during the Perseverance spacecraft landing on Mars in February, picking up simple radio signals broadcast by Perseverance during this most sensitive part of the descent to the surface. Read more in the Featured Image section of Contact.

By Norbert Junkes (Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy)

Effelsberg’s huge 100m dish is still one of the most powerful around.

Credits: Norbert Tacken, MPIfR.