We were on our way to Cass, W. Va. and stopped for a tour of the Radio Telescope at Green Banks , just a few miles down the road from Cass.
It is enormous! The largest moving structure in the US, the telescope measues 100 x 110 meters and weighs 7300 metric tons. The day we were there, it was capturing data on gravitational lens effect. This is caused when an object with great gravitational field (such as a black hole) bends the light/radio waves emitted by an object behind it in such a way that the more distant object is seen on earth as several images. "Astronomy Picture of the Day" ran an excellent picture & explanation of this in March, 1999.

We are drawn to telescopes. Two examples can be found on the pittsburghdiary site:

• The Very Large Array
• Amateur Astronomers Association of Pittsburgh