Once again, the SETI institute has returned to the world's largest telescope to continue its research. Follow the institute's progress in Puerto Rico here at SPACE.com with Project Phoenix astronomer Seth Shostak's reports from the front.

Tuesday, October 17, 2000 1:30 a.m.

SETI@Arecibo Diaries

FIRST ENTRY - EVIDENCE FOR ALIENS: 'So, do you really, really think there are aliens out there?' It's a question astronomer Seth Shostak hears often. 'Yes, I do," Shostak says, 'I wouldnt be on this plane otherwise.'READ MORE .

SECOND ENTRY - SCANNING FOR SIGNALS: I dont imagine that Columbus spent a lot of time at the bow of his ship, squinting at the horizon for a sign of land. He left that tedious job to some miserable hireling, sent into the rigging. Meet the modern day hireling: The System. READ MORE .

"Take the con." Peter Backus smiles, and gestures toward a beat-up chair. "Twenty acres of antenna mesh, miles and miles of cable, a trailer stuffed with integrated circuits -- and its all yours"

"Hard to resist" I murmur, and sit down. Its 6:00 p.m., and already dark outside. Weve deliberately chosen to conduct our search at night to avoid the problem caused by signals passing too near the Sun. Charged particles from Sol can turn a narrow-band signal from an easy-to-find pure tone to a difficult-to-uncover buzz. So our hunt for ET is nocturnal. I take the early shift, from now to midnight, and then Jill Tarter presses the search until 6:00 a.m.

Peter helps me get everything started. His fingers rattle across one of the keyboards, and The System connects to the Arecibo control software. The System can now direct the positioning of Arecibos needle-thin beam. A second keyboard pizzicato brings Jodrell Bank on-line. We are now definitely in command. I sit back and briefly consider telling Scottie in the engine room to jack us up to Warp 6.

Peter checks the incoming signal levels as The System begins to do its thing. A bit of code called the Autoscheduler rummages through the thousands of stars in our hit list, looking for those that are in position for a search. It suggests its best choice: star 5673. I pliantly accept the Autoschedulers recommendation, and within seconds the telescopes drive motors in Puerto Rico and England growl and grind, slewing both antenna beams to cover 5673 and its surroundings.

While the scopes are being aimed, I look up the characteristics of our target, 5673. (Thats the Project Phoenix designation. Its astronomical moniker is HD 211476.) It is a G2 star, which means its nearly identical in size and brightness to the Sun. Its distance is 100 light-years. If you know where to look, you can see 5673 with a cheesy pair of binoculars.