At 22:16 on 15 August 1977 the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio Wesleyan University recorded a narrowband signal at about 1420.4556 MHz, roughly 50 kHz off the hydrogen line, for the full 72 seconds the dish could hold that patch of sky. The astronomer Jerry Ehman circled the printout and wrote Wow! beside it, which is how it got its name. It has never been detected again despite searches with other telescopes through the 1990s and 2000s, and one detection with no confirmation is not a result, which is why it sits where it sits: the most tantalising 72 seconds in the history of the search, and no more than that. Big Ear is gone, dismantled after the site was sold. The original printout is kept by the Ohio History Connection.
Delaware, Ohio
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