Kootwijk Würzburg restored

© CC-BY-SA 4.0 Museum Vliegbasis Deelen / ASTRON archive

As announced last year, the first telescope of ASTRON has been found. This Würzburg Riese parabola was restored by volunteers of Museum Vliegbasis Deelen into its original form, a radar dish.

Unfortunately the restored dish is not part of an exposition; it is now in storage. We have heard that the restoration took so much effort that they do not want to expose the dish to the weather ever again. The museum does, however, provide good photos of the restored dish, through its archive at archief.museumdeelen.nl (search for 'Riese').

The collage shows, in black an white, an exterior photo of the telescope with Maarten Schmidt and Gart Westerhout, and an internal view featuring Lex Muller. The historic images were taken by Arie Hin. The color photos are from Museum Deelen, showing what the telescope looks like now, in the storage in Elst.