Issue |
A&A
Volume 643, November 2020
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A126 | |
Number of page(s) | 7 | |
Section | Astronomical instrumentation | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202038976 | |
Published online | 11 November 2020 |
Radio telescope total power mode: improving observation efficiency⋆
1
LERMA & UMR8112 du CNRS, Observatoire de Paris, PSL University, Sorbonne Universités, CNRS, 75014 Paris, France
e-mail: laurent.pagani@obspm.fr
2
Green Bank Observatory, PO Box 2, Green Bank, WV 24944, USA
3
Lycée Jean-Baptiste Corot, 91605 Savigny-sur-Orge, France
4
Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM), 300 rue de la Piscine, 38400 Saint-Martin d’Hères, France
Received:
20
July
2020
Accepted:
19
September
2020
Aims. Radio observing efficiency can be improved by calibrating and reducing the observations in total power mode rather than in frequency, beam, or position-switching modes.
Methods. We selected a sample of spectra obtained from the Institut de Radio-Astronomie Millimétrique (IRAM) 30-m telescope and the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to test the feasibility of the method. Given that modern front-end amplifiers for the GBT and direct Local Oscillator injection for the 30 m telescope provide smooth pass bands that are a few tens of megahertz in width, the spectra from standard observations can be cleaned (baseline removal) separately and then co-added directly when the lines are narrow enough (a few km s−1), instead of performing the traditional ON minus OFF data reduction. This technique works for frequency-switched observations as well as for position- and beam-switched observations when the ON and OFF data are saved separately.
Results. The method works best when the lines are narrow enough and not too numerous so that a secure baseline removal can be achieved. A signal-to-noise ratio improvement of a factor of √2 is found in most cases, consistent with theoretical expectations.
Conclusions. By keeping the traditional observing mode, the fallback solution of the standard reduction technique is still available in cases of suboptimal baseline behavior, sky instability, or wide lines, and to confirm the line intensities. These techniques of total-power-mode reduction can be applied to any radio telescope with stable baselines as long as they record and deliver the ONs and OFFs separately, as is the case for the GBT.
Key words: radio lines: general / methods: observational / telescopes / methods: data analysis / techniques: spectroscopic
Based on observations carried out with the Green Bank Telescope and the IRAM 30-m. The Green Bank Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. IRAM is supported by INSU/CNRS (France), MPG (Germany), and IGN (Spain).
© L. Pagani et al. 2020
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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