I created these interactive 3D models in 1997 at Arecibo Observatory. To view them, you will need a plugin for your browser which displays VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) files. The Cortona VRML client works best in my experience. Cosmo Player also works. (On Linux, you can try your luck with FreeWRL or OpenVRML's lookat utility, but, as much as I love Linux, I have not had much luck with these viewers.)
I give credit to Tony Acevedo, whose photographs appear in the background of my model of the radio telescope, and the National Science Foundation, which funded my work at Arecibo.
Arecibo Observatory appears in the movie Contact, as itself, and also has a part in Goldeneye, as a tough but lovable communications center for an evil plot. However, contrary to what you heard in Goldeneye, the dish is not the size of a football field--it is the size of 13 football fields. The dish is also not made of concrete as suggested by the movie; instead, it is composed of 38,778 aluminum panels supported by an intricate network of cables below the dish. The cables can be adjusted to keep the surface of the 1000-foot-diameter dish spherical to within 2 millimeters. The panels are perforated to reduce weight and allow water to drain through, onto ferns that grow in the shade underneath the dish.