Remember those halcyon days when I'd spend my evenings making stuff ? No, neither do I. :P

But here at last is a BRAND NEW CGI project, the ALMA radio telescope, which will eventually be available in VR. This is orders of magnitude less complex than Arecibo. There are, I believe, four unique telescope designs (one each for the 12m antennas from Europe, America and Japan, and one for the 7m dishes), all of which are relatively simple to model and can simply be duplicated to make up the full array of 66. Then, the compact array covers a small, flat site, which is naught but what bare rock can tell.

The big problem is finding good reference images. For Arecibo I had the original schematics. For ALMA these are currently modelled just by eye from reference images, so this is really just a very quick proof of concept. But perhaps if I ask nicely, the powers that be can supply me with suitable imagery...

#Blender
#Astronomy