Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Roberto Bartali
Introduction
Radioastronomy is the science of seeing the invisible and the only field of
astronomy that was not first developed by physicist. For almost two decades (´30
and ´40), a radioastronomer was a radio engineer. Its birth was for casualty, when
Karl Jansky, trying to identify a noise source in radio communication, discovered
that the noise came from the
Galaxy and its peak near the
Milky Way center.
Figure 1
Radioastronomy opened a
new and wider vision of the
The Arecibo (Puerto Rico) Radiotelescope. It is the
biggest single dish antenna ever built. Universe. Every object in the sky,
From: http://www.naic.edu/open.htm independently of its size (from a
single hydrogen atom to a
supermassive black hole) emits some kind of electromagnetic radiation at a very
specific wavelength. Radio telescopes came in a variety of sizes and shapes
(Figure 1) that depends on the wavelength and the sensitivity one needs.
1
How a radiotelescope works
2
Evolution of Single Dish Radio Telescopes
The
Figure 4
The Reber 9 m. Radiotelescope.
decade of 1950
From: www.ras.ucalgary.ca/ marks the
~douglas/greber.JPG beginning of the
giant
radiotelescope era projects, and, in the follow
decade, most of them were built. This growing
is parallel to the beginning of the space
exploration era and respond to needs to track satellites. Their use as a scientific
instrument were only secundary, but soon, many of them were founded. The
history of radiotelescope begins with the one of Karl Jansky in 1931 (series of
dipole antenna), but the first parabolic dish for radioastronomical purpose only, was
the one built by Reber in 1937 (Figure 4).
Figure 5
The first
The 76.2 m. Jodrell Bank Mark I giant dish was
radiotelescope (1957). the Jodrell
From: Lowell B.,Conocimiento
Actual del Universo
Bank Mark I
(Figure 5)
which start its operation in 1957 [Lowell 1975].
Soon, many other big dishes were built around
the world (Green Bank, Arecibo, Goldstone,
Effelsberg, Parkes, etc.). One of the last built is
the 110 meters Green Bank in 1991 (Figure 6),
as we see the difference in the dish topology is
evident through the hystory.
3
signals of much higher frequency. Until de invention of the microprocessor, in the
decade of 1970, all the received signals was managed in analog form. In the next
three decades, microprocessor speed and
computing power increase a lot, also the cost of
the memories was inversely proportional to the
density, so larger memories was available at
verly low prices. During last 10 years, many
programmable components (FPGA) with
hundred of thousand transistors inside, appears
in the market at affordable prices, they are
capable to work at very high clock speed, let
electronic designers to manipulate the signals of
the amplifier in digital form.
Figure 7
The 100 m. Effelsberg
radiotelescope.
From: http://www.mpifr-
bonn.mpg.de/div/effelsberg/
t.html
Figure 8
Parkes radiotelescope
control room.
From: Parkes web site
4
A very big problem for a large dish is the weight and the wind. In a full
steerable radiotelescope, the force of gravity is able to deform the shape of the
reflector, reducing the effectiveness or even made it
unusable at all, the same is true for the wind. The
solution is not easy, one approach is to stop
observing during wind time, other is to place the
telescope in a certain position and move the
secondary reflector (like the Arecibo radiotelescope),
but this reduce the capability to receive signals from
sources at large angles respect to the axis of the
parabola.
The signal
Figure 9
amplified and pre-
Part of the Jodrell Bank control
room. processed by the
From Jodrell Bank web site electronic system, is
then converted to an image by a powerful
computer and analysed by very complicated software. The first computer control
for the analisys of the signal was much less efficient than a modern scientific
calculator (Figure 8). This days, the radiotelescope is connected to a
supercomputer because the amount of data due to the high resolution radio image
is very large (Figure 9).
Single dish radiotelescopes are used today for several top line research:
• Radar mapping of asteroides and
• tracking of space satellites,
• geodesic studies,
• pulsar timing measurement
• radio spectroscopy
Figure 10
The asteroid Toutatis, image made by the
Arecibo Radiotelescope
From: Arecibo web site
5
asteroides reaching and crossing the Earth orbit, the position can be computed
with very high accuracy, even with a few measurements.
Radio spectroscopy and the study of all kind of radio sources, were made
exclusively by single dish rdiotelescopes for many years, but now these kind of
studies are better with interferometers, however, many interferometric
configurations, uses the big dishes too.
Conclusion
Today large single dish radiotelescopes are currently used and they still
produce a lot of science and discovery. I think that interferometers have many
advantages over a single dish, but there are room for both. Much of the work done
by a single dish is, now, realized in conjunction with many other facilities, really
there is not a research developed just by a single instrument, because only a few
can work as a stand alone telescope, like the Arecibo. Scientific and technological
cooperation between countries and the globalization, allowed the share of data and
scientist from one country can work in another, this way the results are better,
cheaper and rapid.
I think that , no more “big ears” will be built in the future due to the eccessive
difficult and cost of such a system, like the Effelsberg or all other giants. The
technological challenges are difficult to overcome. As the electronic technology
make available better receivers, they will be installed on those big radiotelescopes
replaceing the obsolete ones, so this way, they earn a new life. Instead, an
interferometer is less expensive, specially for the mechanical structure, because a
6
small dish weights much less, so the problem of deformation is much less too. A
fully steerable telescope for an interferometer is easier to build.
References