Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope The Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) is an aperture synthesis interferometer near World War II Nazi detention and transit camp Westerbork, north of the village of Westerbork, Midden-Drenthe, in the northeastern Netherlands. It consists of a linear array of 14 antennas with a diameter of 25 metres arranged on a 2.7 km East-West line. It has a similar arrangement to other radio telescopes such as the One-Mile Telescope, Australia Telescope Compact Array and the Ryle Telescope. Its Equatorial mount is what sets it apart from most other radio telescopes, most of which have an Altazimuth mount.
History of the telescope astronomy after World War II, with telescopes being developed for other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum from radio to gamma-rays. Radio astronomy began in 1931 when Karl Jansky discovered that the Milky Way was a source of radio emission while doing research on terrestrial static with a direction antenna. Building on Jansky's work, Grote Reber built a more sophisticated purpose-built radio telescope in 1937, with a dish; using this, he discovered various unexplained radio sources in the sky. Interest in radio astronomy grew after the Second World War when much larger dishes were built including: the Jodrell bank telescope (1957),