Issue |
A&A
Volume 687, July 2024
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A27 | |
Number of page(s) | 20 | |
Section | Astronomical instrumentation | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202142116 | |
Published online | 26 June 2024 |
Out-of-focus holography at the Effelsberg telescope
Systematic measurements of the surface of a 100 m telescope using OOF holography
1
Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie,
Auf dem Hügel 69,
53121
Bonn, Germany
e-mail: ubach@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
2
Department of Electrical Engineering, Universidad de Chile,
Av. Tupper 2007,
Santiago
8370451, Chile
Received:
30
August
2021
Accepted:
26
March
2024
Context. Out-of-focus (OOF) holography can be used to determine the aperture deformations of radio telescopes that lead to errors in the phase of the complex aperture distribution. In contrast to traditional methods, OOF holography can be performed without a reference antenna, which has a number of practical advantages.
Aims. The aim of this work is to develop a standard procedure for OOF holography at the Effelsberg telescope. This includes performing OOF holography observations and the development of dedicated software, the pyoof package, to compute aberrations of the telescope’s optical system.
Methods. Based on the OOF holography method developed at the Green Bank telescope, we adapted the approach to the Effelsberg 100 m telescope in order to determine the aberrations of the aperture phase distribution (phase-error maps).
Results. The developed OOF holography software is presented as well as the results from observations at Effelsberg. Early results reveal gravitation-related residual deformation not contained in the previously existing aperture and pointing model, and hence we propose changes to the model to counteract aberrations in the telescope’s surface.
Conclusions. The OOF holography method (observations and pyoof package) works as expected at the Effelsberg 100 m telescope and is able to validate the good performance of the existing finite element model. Test measurements show that slight improvements of the aperture efficiency and gain elevation dependence are possible but limited in the current configuration.
Key words: instrumentation: miscellaneous / methods: observational / techniques: miscellaneous / telescopes
© The Authors 2024
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.
This article is published in open access under the Subscribe to Open model.
Open Access funding provided by Max Planck Society.
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