The Hat Creek Radio Observatory has a rich history of important scientific discoveries about space. Built more than 50 years ago by the University of California, Berkeley and managed by SRI since 2012, the facility is located in a remote area about 300 miles northeast of San Francisco, California. The surrounding volcanic mountains block interferences such as television, radio, and distant cellular phone transmissions.

SRI manages and uses the facility to support a variety of projects of interest to the scientific community in radio astronomy and space science.

The observatory includes the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), a unique, flexible research instrument designed as a Large Number of Small Dishes (LNSD) array. The array includes a 42-dish radio telescope that can operate in multiple frequency bands while its digital hardware runs scientific experiments, such as creating panchromatic, wide-angle images of the sky. The dishes can also be operated independently to look in different areas of the sky simultaneously. 

Completed in 2007, the ATA was built by the SETI Institute and the University of California, with major funding from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. The SETI Institute conducts its own research programs using the array.

Visit the Observatory website for additional information.

ATA Specifications