
Damage to Arecibo Leaves Gaping Hole in Astronomy - rbanffy
https://hackaday.com/2020/08/24/damage-to-arecibo-leaves-gaping-hole-in-astronomy/
======
szczys
I'm kind of baffled by the concept of radar astronomy. Apparently this is one
of two radio telescopes that can do radar astronomy [1], but I'm shocked it
works at all since the inverse square law leads to such a falloff in power as
distance increases. On the other hand, even radio amateurs can achieve moon
bounce, so if you consider the enormity of the dish it makes sense that it can
hear the radar bounce from much further away. The wiki says Arecibo was used
for mapping rings of Saturn and surface features of Mars. Bonkers.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_astronomy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_astronomy)

