THE CARIBBEAN, The Arecibo Telescope, Puerto Rico

THE LARGEST TELESCOPE IN THE WORLD - The Arecibo telescope is distinguished by its enormous size. The dish is the largest curved focusing dish on Earth, giving Arecibo the largest electromagnetic-wave gathering capacity. Arecibo Observatory is uniquely suited to search for signals from extraterrestrial life, by focusing on thousands of star systems in the 1,000MHz to 3,000 MHz range. No such signals have been found.
Arecibo Observatory has provided a unique setting for Hollywood filmmakers. The observatory was the setting for the climatic scenes in the James Bond movie Goldeneye, and a good portion of the movie Contact, based on a novel by Carl Sagan and starring Jodie Foster, takes place at Arecibo. Another science fiction movie called Survivor was filmed on observatory grounds. Use of the Arecibo Observatory is available on an equal, competitive basis to all scientists from throughout the world to pursue research in astronomy, planetary studies and space and atmospheric sciences.