GPCA Antennas & Workshop

The Radio Telescopes

The GPCA has 13 movable antennas and 10 stationary antennas. (One movable dish is always set aside for maintenance.) Nine stationary antennas are steerable 10.5-meter Leighton-style telescopes, the tenth being the 50-meter Tillinghast Radio Telescope atop the control tower. (The TRT is similar to the Murriyang dish atop the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, but the TRT is 14 meters smaller in diameter.) The 230-ton movable antennas are 25-meter dishes, and are identical to the antennas used by the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico. The antennas act collectively as an interferometer with several configurations, but they can also be divided into sub-arrays.

The Music of the Spheres
The GPCA’s radio telescopes were created by Kevin A. Ross and first described in The Stars Are Right, pg. 109 [122–123]. The GPCA in Bible Black is larger than the one in the 1992 scenario. Additionally, the movable antennas in Bible Black are larger than the stationary antennas. For more on the GPCA’s radio telescopes and how they function, see “Chapter 3—March 17 Monday.”

These VLA antennas are identical to the ones at the GPCA

Antenna Names
The movable antennas are designated Antennas A through N, skipping the letter “I.” The stationary antennas are designated Antennas 1 through 10. The stationary antennas are formally named after astronomers: 1-Galileo, 2-Copernicus, 3-Tycho, 4-Kepler, 5-Halley, 6-Herschel, 7-Jansky, 8-Reber, 9-Bell, and the 50-meter dish is the Tillinghast Radio Telescope, but everyone calls it the “Salad Bowl.” Despite these names, most of the techs have dubbed the Leighton dishes after NFL wide receivers such as Jerry Rice, Don Hutson, and Randy Mos.

The movable antennas don’t have formal names, but the predominately male techs have historically nicknamed them Able Alice, Bouncing Betty, Chatty Cathy, Delta Dawn, Eager Ellie, Fat Fanny, Greedy Gretchen, Henrietta Hippo, Jolly Janet, Kiss-me Kate, Lindy Loo, Maggie May, and Naughty Nancy. These sexist designations were tempered in the early 2000s—visitors are usually told their nicknames without the accompanying adjectives—and a movement has gathered steam to rechristen them after female astronomers. The current proposal is: Aglaonike, Burbidge, Cannon, Du Chatelet, Eimart, Fleming, Ghez, Hypatia, Jekyll, Klumpke, Leavitt, Mitchell, and Newberg, although a few of these remain contested. (Joceyln Bell is already honored by a stationary antenna, and Vera C. Rubin is getting the new telescope in Chile.)

The Workshop

More of a collective term than a single building, “the Workshop” encompasses several interconnected facilities on the GPCA campus, including the Antenna Assembly Building—a large aircraft-hangar like structure where telescopes can be sheltered and repaired, commonly called “the Barn.” Adjacent to this are the GPCA garages, machine shops, warehouses, and cryo labs. (The receivers in the antenna’s vertex rooms must be kept below 15 kelvin.) There’s also a suite of offices for the various technical and mechanical managers, along with a supply depot that equips workers with extra work gloves, hard hats, welding lenses, etc. The depot contains a room with keys to most buildings in the facility, including the Swezey-Minnich Observatory.

The Music of the Spheres
The Workshop was created by Kevin A. Ross and first described in The Stars Are Right,  pg. 109 [122]. The GPCA’s workshop is significantly larger than the one depicted in the 1992 scenario, and is loosely based on the facilities at the VLA in New Mexico.

Vehicles
The workshop contains parking spaces, garages, and maintenance bays for the GPCA’s vans, pickup trucks, and SUVs. This fleet includes a tow truck, an electrician’s truck, a mobile welding rig, a backhoe, and a pair of “cherry picker” hydraulic aerial work platforms (AWPs).

Antenna Transporters
The radio telescopes are moved by Clifford and Big Red, the GPCA’s antenna transporters, a pair of large tractors mounted on twin railroad tracks. Each can lift a 230-ton antenna from its mounts and transport it to the Barn for repairs and maintenance. They also shift the movable antennas into new configurations, a process that occurs every three to four months.

Bible Black > Locations
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Author: A. Buell Ruch (Based on work by Kevin A. Ross)
Last Modified: 23 October 2025
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
Bible Black PDF: [TBD]