Planetary Society Opens World's First Dedicated Optical SETI Telescope(Forwarded)

The Planetary Society
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Pasadena, CA 91106-2301 USA
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CONTACT: Susan Lendroth
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 11, 2006

Planetary Society Opens World's First Dedicated Optical SETI Telescope

New Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Begins

Pasadena, CA -- Today, April 11, 2006, The Planetary Society dedicated a
new optical telescope at an observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts -- one
designed solely to search for light signals from alien civilizations. Read
more at
http://planetary.org/programs/projec...ical_searches/

Opening ceremonies for The Planetary Society's Optical SETI Telescope
featured Project Director Paul Horowitz of Harvard University; Planetary
Society Chairman Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of New York's Hayden
Planetarium; and Society Executive Director Louis Friedman.

"With the launch of The Planetary Society's Optical SETI Telescope," said
Friedman, "we are proud to be part of a new voyage of discovery with this
great Harvard team."

The new telescope is the first dedicated optical SETI telescope in the
world. Its 72-inch primary mirror is larger than that of any optical
telescope in the U.S. east of the Mississippi River.

Under the direction of Horowitz and his team, the optical SETI telescope
will conduct a year round, all-sky survey, scanning the entire swath of
our Milky Way galaxy visible in the northern hemisphere.

"This new search apparatus performs one trillion measurements per second
and expands by 100,000-fold the sky coverage of our previous optical
search," said Horowitz.

The telescope has been built at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics Oak Ridge Observatory, where for many years, The Planetary
Society has conducted radiotelescope SETI searches with Horowitz. The
first was the Mega-channel Extraterrestrial Assay (META) search, which was
later expanded to the Billion-channel Extraterrestrial Assay (BETA).

Alien civilizations are thought by many to be at least as likely to use
visible light signals for communicating as they are to use radio
transmissions. Visible light can form tight beams, be incredibly intense,
and its high frequencies allow it to carry enormous amounts of
information. Using only Earth 2006 technology, a bright, tightly-focused
light beam, such as a laser, can be ten thousand times as bright as its
parent star for a brief instant. Such a beam could be easily observed
from enormous distances.

"The opening of this telescope represents one of those rare moments in a
field of scientific endeavor when a great leap forward is enabled," said
Planetary Society Director of Projects Bruce Betts. "Sending laser
signals across the cosmos would be a very logical way for E.T. to reach
out, but until now, we have been ill equipped to receive any such signal."

The Planetary Society's Optical SETI telescope's custom processors will
process the equivalent of all books in print every second. As the
telescope scans stripes of sky, it employs a custom-built "camera"
containing an array of detectors that can detect a billionth-of-a-second
flash of light. The telescope will scan the sky every night, weather
permitting.

Planetary Society members around the world helped fund the optical SETI
telescope. Additional major support for the telescope came from the
Bosack/Kruger Foundation.

Since its founding, the Society has been a leading advocate of the Search
for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, supporting a wide variety of searches,
making use of different approaches. The first META search, which began
over 20 years ago, kicked off with a significant donation from Society
Board Member Steven Spielberg. Most of the Society-sponsored searches have
been radio SETI projects. The new observatory is one of the largest SETI
projects ever sponsored by The Planetary Society.

About the Planetary Society

The Planetary Society has inspired millions of people to explore other
worlds and seek other life. Today, its international membership makes the
non-governmental Planetary Society the largest space interest group in the
world. Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman founded The Planetary
Society in 1980.

IMAGE CAPTION:
[http://www.planetary.org/image/oseti_ribbon.jpg (539KB)]
Cutting the Ribbon

Clockwise from top left: Paul Horowitz, Louis Friedman, Charles Alcock,
and Vida Kazemi at the Optical SETI telescope ribbon-cutting ceremony at
the Oak Ridge Observatory, April 11, 2006. Credit: The Planetary Society