One element of the telescope that was damaged was a "line feed," or antenna, about 30 meters long used to receive and transmit radio signals at a frequency of 430 megahertz, primarily for atmospheric studies. The line feed, suspended from the top of the telescope, fell and crashed through the dish below, damaging about 30 panels out of the nearly 40,000 that make up the dish, he said.
A separate Gregorian mount used for radio astronomy observations was not seriously damaged. "The Gregorian was inspected yesterday," Gaume said. "That seems to be intact."
A separate 12-meter dish at the observatory, built several years ago, was initially reported to be destroyed. "That turns out not to be the case," he said. "Communications has been a real difficult problem. Information as far as what the damage is is still coming in, but overall, the word that we have is much more optimistic than what initially heard from Arecibo."
