Germany: The Effelsberg radio telescope

Effelsberg is an important part of the worldwide network of radio telescopes. The combination of different telescopes in interferometric mode makes possible to obtain the sharpest images of the universe.

Since its inauguration in 1972, the Effelsberg 100-m radio telescope is one of the world's largest fully steerable telescopes. It operates at wavelengths from about 7 mm to 90 cm. The telescope is operated by the Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie in Bonn, Germany (part of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft).

For nearly 30 years it was the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world - until the opening of the Green Bank Telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia (USA) in the year 2000. This last telescope has a diameter of 100 - 110 meters.

The Effelsberg radio telescope is employed to observe pulsars, cold gas- and dust clusters, the sites of star formation, jets of matter emitted by black holes and the nuclei (centres) of distant far-off galaxies.