Well, everything that is in Orbit around the Earth with a greater
inclination than the latitude of Arecibo would be with the narrow range
that the big dish has. At some point. Tracking known stuff when the time
is right, and just scanning in between, eventually would would have them
all.

I would the the benifits of size would be a big plus.

--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @
--

On Sat, 23 Dec 2006 11:31:25+0000, Henry Spencer wrote:

In article id,
Dr J R Stockton wrote:
Valleys with vaguely suitable shapes, you can find. The big problem is
that an Arecibo-type dish is not very steerable. It can only look at
things in a limited range of celestial latitudes, and even if your target
is in that strip of sky, you only get one short look each day...

AIUI, Arecibo has a shallowish upwards-facing dish and over it is
suspended an aerial cabin in a fixed (?) position...
How about (in another valley) having a near-hemispherical upwards-facing
dish with an aerial assembly on motorised cables so that it could
routinely be moved wherever required in the bowl, so steering the beam
over the entire upwards hemisphere?

As others have already noted, this *is* done at Arecibo (or was; I haven't
kept track of the recent changes). In practice, it doesn't give you
anywhere near a full hemisphere of steering; instead of 180deg, the useful
steering range is 20-30deg (if I'm remembering correctly). There is only
so much you can do to steer a fixed dish by playing games with the feed.

You might be able to do a bit better if you worked really hard at it, but
do note that Arecibo's limited steering range is a big handicap to it, and
so some smart people have put considerable thought into widening that
range, with very limited results.