Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope

The Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) is a 3-km east-west array of fourteen 25-m dish antennae near Hooghalen in the Netherlands. The signals from the array are combined, in a technique called aperture synthesis, to provide the resolution of a single large instrument. A dozen of the dishes were completed in 1970: 10 fixed in a 1.2-km line and two movable on a 300-m length of track at the eastern end. In 1980, two more mobile dishes were set up on a 200-m length of track 1.4 km to the east. The WSRT is operated by the Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy.