Plateau de Bure Interferometer, Radio interferometer on Pic de Bure mountain near Grenoble, France
The Plateau de Bure Interferometer is a radio observatory located on a high mountain plateau in the French Alps near Grenoble, at roughly 8,370 ft (2,550 m) above sea level. Several large dish antennas were arranged along a track so they could work together to detect faint radio signals from deep space.
The observatory was built in the late 1980s by a European research consortium and began operating shortly after. After more than two decades of use, it was replaced by a newer facility called NOEMA, built on the same site.
The Plateau de Bure sits on a remote mountain ridge in the French Alps, far from cities and artificial light. Visitors approaching from below can spot the white dish antennas standing out clearly against the rock and sky.
The site sits at high elevation in the Alps and is accessible only by mountain roads that are often closed or icy in winter. A visit generally requires prior permission from the operating institution.
The antennas could be moved along rails to change the spacing between them, which allowed researchers to switch between observing fine detail and wider areas of the sky. This kind of reconfigurable setup was uncommon for a ground-based observatory of this size at the time.
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