[petschge]

Telescopes are not typically "do nothing. I am not aware of the details of Arecibo, but the big telescope in Greenbank has a paint crew work for 8 hours a day for multiple weeks each summer. And after several years the entire telescope is repainted and they start all over from the beginning. During the day time hours when the paint crew the is working the telescope can not be moved to point at objects, but is still taking data in the form of drift scans, recording whatever passes through the field of view of the telescope. A whole bunch of pulsars has been found that way.

[dgr582systems]

To clarify, I only meant that the telescope has not been maintained (do nothing) lately as per the article. My fault for not writing more clearly.

As you say, it would be a lot of work to maintain if they wanted to keep Arecibo running.