Greetings and welcome to the Introduction to Astronomy. One of the things that I like to do in each of my introductory astronomy classes is to begin the class with the astronomy picture of the day. From the NASA website that is APOD.nasa.gov slash APOD. Today's picture for December 9th of 2020. Well it is titled Eriscebo Telescope Collapse. So what do we see here? Well this is actually a video clip from December 1st just a little over a week ago which showed the final collapse of the Eriscebo Telescope. Now the Eriscebo Telescope was the largest single dish radio telescope for many decades. From the time it was made in 1963 until just a few years ago when a slightly larger telescope was created in China. Now this is a three or was I should say a 305 meter telescope. It had finally had some issues over the last couple of months where there had been some damage to it where there had been a partial collapse and it had been decided a month ago to decommission it completely and this shows the final collapse. So as we go ahead and play the video what you'll see first is the receiver antenna falling down on towards the main dish. You can see all of the lines that had been holding it as they snap as it collapses down on to the main dish. And then we will get a as we see the dust rising we will get a second view here and that's looking from the Eriscebo Observatory drone and you can see and you'll be able to watch as those cables begin to snap and come apart as it collapses and eventually then releasing the detector down itself and crashing down and you can see parts of the dish down below as the detector crashes down into them and you can see much of the damage that it occurred to the telescope. And of course the telescope has now has been decommissioned so will obviously no longer be in use it's well beyond repair and that had been decided even before this final collapse as we watch through the video again and that is actually the end of the Eriscebo telescope which did many things including a searching for extraterrestrial intelligence sending a message out into space that could be detected sometime hopefully in the distant future helping us search for exoplanets or planets outside our solar system and studying things like mercury and Venus. So an incredibly large telescope that has now finally met its end in the demise as the receiver collapses completely destroying the telescope that had existed. Now as I said this was the largest single dish radio telescope for a long time 300 meters or about three football fields across and not steerable could only look pretty much straight overhead but was supported by the ground allowing it to be much larger than any other radio telescope. Now there are larger telescopes that are used in that they are used multiple little telescopes and combine signals together through interferometry so there are things that are much larger but for some studies a large single dish was very important and astronomers around the world will miss the Eriscebo telescope. Well that was our picture of the day for December 9th of 2020. It was titled Eriscebo Telescope Collapse. We'll be back again tomorrow for the next picture. So until then have a great day everyone and I will see you in class.