Radio Astronomy; A comparison of

radio telescope systems.

Supervised by: Dr Shirin Haque
Ramana Harrichan

GOAL: TO COMPARE THE DESIGNS OF THREE RADIO TELESCOPE

SYSTEMS AND SUGGEST A UNIQUE DESIGN FOR A TELESCOPE SYSTEM
The Radio Telescope Systems Studied
was;
 The Very Large Array
 The Allen Telescope Array
 A do-it yourself experiment found on the internet.

 These three experiments lead me to be inspired to create my own design.

The unique design
proposed was A
Pentagonal Radio
Telescope Array.
Illustrated to the
left.
The Components of The Pentagonal Array Is
Described As Follows;
 The six red Circles represent The six  Each Individual Dish Has A low noise
dishes set at an angular separation of block down converter mounted onto the
72 degrees arm of the antenna.
 The black lines connecting the dishes to  The power supply for the system should
the grey rectangular box is the ideally be a 1110v ac output.
connection to the satellite signal
meters.
The Shape of The Very Large Array is preserved
within the pentagonal Array.
The following are some of the ways in
which the Array can be used.
Solar Spectroscopy.
 The design of the Pentagonal Array was
made in mind particularly to be used as a
Solar spectroscope for the analysis of the
emission spectrum of the radio band of
the sun.
Radio Astronomical Observations
 The Pentagonal array can also be used for
radio astronomy of other astronomical
phenomena if they are luminous enough
to be observed such as the other planets
and stars.
  Consider a primordial cloud of gas. The law of gravitation
is the catalyst for mass to start to clump together and then
because of the law of angular momentum conservation
this mass would have started to spin and is still spinning
The following is a to this day because there are no significant external forces.
brief explanation of  This spinning of a mass of charged particles around a
centre of gravity acts analogously to charge flowing in a
the formation of loop from electromagnetism. This would then produce
magnetic fields in loops through the centre perpendicular
the sun and radio to the axis of rotation out of one the pole and into the
other as analogous with the magnetic field of earth. It is
waves from it, the these magnetic fields along with quantum mechanical
main astronomical phenomena that excite electrons of atoms present in the
sun which causes the emission of radio waves in order for
object of interest. electrons to transition back into a less excited quantum
state. It is these radio emissions that the radio array is
observing is this project.
The Pentagonal Array design
specifications.
 Each of the dishes are separated 72  The Array consist of about 150 m of
degrees apart. coaxial cables for its wiring
 The distance from the outer dish to the  The configuration of the array can be
center is 25 m varied to act as one large dish and a
 spectroscope
The effective diameter of the Array is
50m.  The Array Can also be set up to function
as a miniature Very Large Array.
In summary;
FOR MY PROJECT AFTER THE ANALYSIS OF 3 DIFFERENT TELESCOPE DESIGNS THE
DESIGN I PROPOSED WAS THE PENTAGONAL TELESCOPIC ARRAY TO BE USED FOR
SOLAR SPECTROSCOPY.