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70 Years of Telescopes Tuned to Cosmic Radio

Published last October, This Images illustrates the progression of radio telescopes from Jansky’s primitive ’scope to the huge arrays of antennas now installed in the world’s deserts and perhaps, one day, on the moon  

Radio astronomy began with static. Bell Laboratories wanted to get rid of it and went looking for its causes. With a hand-built radio telescope, Karl Jansky discovered a clear signal of something else amidst the noise from thunderstorms near and far: a steady static that appeared to emanate from the center of the Milky Way.

The field of studying radio waves arriving at Earth from outer space was born. Jansky didn’t know what could be causing the radio waves, and Bell Labs pulled him off the project soon after his big discovery. Still, he’s considered the father of radio astronomy.