PHOENIX Another major SETI project is called Project PHOENIX, led by the privately funded SETI Institute. This is a targeted search whose aim is to observe over 1000 of the nearest Sun-like star systems and has scheduled time on the Arecibo Radio Telescope (Puerto Rico, USA) for around 40 nights each year, spread over 5 years. Rejection of terrestrial signals In contrast to SERENDIP, the analysis is carried out in real time and uses a second telescope to provide an immediate rejection of man-made signals. This second telescope does not need to be quite so large as Arecibo, but should not be significantly smaller, and at present the University of Manchester's 76-metre Lovell Telescope is being used. The Arecibo Telescope uses a 56-million channel receiver to make initial signal detections. Information about those signals which are not in the data bank of known terrestrial signals are passed to two further sets of identical receivers at Arecibo and Jodrell Bank. Due to the rotation of the Earth, and the great distance separating the telescopes, a signal from outside the Solar System will have precisely calculable differences when observed at the two observatories. This allows an extraterrestrial signal, should one be found, to be distinguished from those originating on, or near, the Earth. Terrestrial problems Observations, which began in September 1998, did not get off to a very auspicious start when, just 10 days into the observations, hurricane George swept through the Caribbean and damaged the Arecibo Telescope curtailing that observing session. Happily though, the damage was not too serious and since then observations have run smoothly but there has, as yet, been no call from ET.