Puerto Rico Arecibo Radar Observatory | Puerto Rico Hotels

The Arecibo Observatory, is a very sensitive radio telescope located approximately 9 miles (14 km) south-southwest from the town of Arecibo in Puerto Rico. It is operated by Cornell University under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The observatory works as the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC) although both names are officially used to refer to it. NAIC more properly refers to the organization that runs both the observatory and associated offices at Cornell University.

The telescope is visually distinctive and has been used in the filming of two notable motion pictures: as the villain´s antenna in the James Bond movie GoldenEye, as itself in the film Contact and in the "X-Files" episode "Little Green Men". The telescope received additional international recognition in 1999 when it began to collect data for the SETI@home project.

In June, 2008, the Senate of Puerto Rico approved a resolution urging the United States Mint to include an image of the Arecibo Observatory as Puerto Rico´s symbol in the commemorative quarter it will issue in March and April 2009 as the 50 State Quarters Program is extended to the District of Columbia and the United States territories.

The Arecibo Observatory was originally built as the world´s premier radar facility to study the upper part of the atmosphere called the ionosphere, since then we have expanded our research to include the entire atmosphere.