As part of a major enhancement, designated e-MERLIN, to its MERLIN array of radio telescopes there is a need for new feed designs to cover 4GHz to 8GHz band, for large paraboloid dishes (up to 76 m etres diameter) operating in both prime-focus and cassegrain configurations. The requirement, in each case, for good return loss and constant beam width across an octave band, presents a set of difficult challenges. The feed designs for e-MERLIN are introduced here. The prototypes of the prime-focus feeds and the e-system corrugated horn feed have been designed, manufactured and tested, both in the laboratory and on the respective telescope. The complete corrugated horn for the Cambridge telescope will shortly be manufactured and measured.
High-level Parallel Computing language (HPCL) combines the high performance of Clusters and the easy-to-use property of high-level language Octave. A HPCL program will run concurrently in a set of virtual machines (VMs). Therefore, HPCL programs are machine independent. HPCL keeps the elegant of the current high-level languages. It only needs one additional operator @ to transfer data and commands among the VMs. HPCL is also compatible to the conventional high-level language. Any sequential high-level Octave programs can be run properly in HPCL environment without modification. The realization of HPCL is briefly introduced in this report, including the main system components, execution strategy and message transfer protocol.
The collecting area of a radio telescope is a figure of merit of that instruments's capability. A Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is proposed to be built in the unique karst area of southwest China, and will act, in a sense, as a prototype for the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). It will be over twice as large as Arecibo coupled with much wider sky coverage. Some results from site surveys for such a SKA concept are briefly reported. Technically, FAST is not simply a copy of the existing Arecibo telescope but has rather a number of innovations. Firstly, the proposed main spherical reflector, by conforming to a paraboloid of revolution in real time through actuated active control, enables the realization of both wide bandwidth and full polarization capability while using standard feed design. Secondly, a feed support system which integrates optical, mechanical and electronic technologies will effectively reduce the cost of the support structure and control system. With an overall diameter of 500 m and radius of its spherical surface of 300 m, FAST will be the world's largest single dish.
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