Parabolic Radio Dish

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

Giant Radio Dish

VLA
Very Large Array radio receivers, in Socorro, New Mexico, USA. (Photo by Don Baccus At http://donb.furfly.net/random_walks/vla.html, 1998. Used with permission.)
[VLA][ http://maps.google.com/maps?q=34.078611%2C-107.617778 ]
VLA parabolic dish antenna
VLA parabolic dish antenna. The dish is 25 m in diameter. [image source 2011-11-28 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vla_maintenance.jpg ]
tv dish3
TV dish receiver in Palo Alto, California, USA, 2002. The TV dish receiver is not necessarily parabolic, since the focus is below the center of the dish as we can clearly see in the photo. It is hard to say exactly what receiving dish is actually the shape of a parabola , because many physical and engineering constraints. However, we could say that all these reflectors are based on theories and principles of parabola.