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37 ratings
Arecibo Observatory
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Type: Destination
Theme: Architecture, Space, Tech, Real, Big Things
File Size
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1.811 GB
2 Mar, 2023 @ 11:07am
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Rhysy
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Arecibo Observatory

Description
The William E. Gordon telescope at Arecibo Observatory. Explore the 900 tonne platform suspended 140m above the 305m diameter dish. Prior to its collapse in 2020, this was one of the world's largest telescopes. It featured in two major Hollywood films : Contact, in which Jodie Foster looks for aliens, and Goldeneye, which somewhat prophetically predicts the collapse. Modelled using the actual telescope schematics, site walking and reference photos, with the terrain using USGS elevation data. The background is not Puerto Rico but the closest-looking match I could fnd. Features many info panels explaining how the telescope worked and showing some of its observations.
4 Comments
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larrythefatcat 20 Jun, 2023 @ 3:33pm 
For England, Rhysy? ;)
byteframe 15 Mar, 2023 @ 4:32pm 
I led the group of domestic terrorist splinter cells that forced the second pylon to crash. Feels so good to finally get that off my crest.
Rhysy  [author] 10 Mar, 2023 @ 5:06am 
@mechsicko thank you SO much ! A lot of work went into this and I really do appreciate the feedback.

My ultimate dream would be to have this as a Half Life 2 level. Underneath the dish was a really unique place : you could see the platform overhead quite clearly through the dish, which was anchored to the ground by thousands of steel cables. There were little maintenance shacks spread about and several huge disused antennas rusting away on the ground, with a deep water-filled ditch running around much of the interior area. All in all, a great placed to be ambushed by a headcrab...

More realistically it might be possible to add a few more locations, to be able to go inside the Gregorian dome. But we'll see. Nowadays my funding comes from the ALMA observatory, so that's definitely the next project, which should hopefully be a *lot* faster as it's a much simpler project from a modelling point of view.

Thanks again !
mechsicko 6 Mar, 2023 @ 12:07am 
This is amazing, thank you so much! I watch original Cosmos on a loop when I have free time and love the bits with Carl Sagan at the Aricibo Observatory. It's so neat to be able to see it in 1:1 scale like this in VR to truly appreciate what a phenomenal bit of human achievement if was and really punctuates its loss to the collective madness of humanity Carl was cautiously optimistic about in that series. The addition of all the points of interest signs was really fascinating and definitely in my favorites list.

Makes me wish I could teleport to more places on it and see even more of this and the inclusion of the jungle sounds a nice touch. Hope this gets updates and you also make more environments.