National Radio Astronomy Observatory | 2018 Apr 30
To accelerate the pace of discovery and exploration of the cosmos, a multi-institution team of astronomers and engineers has developed a new and improved version of an unconventional radio-astronomy imaging system known as a Phased Array Feed (PAF). This remarkable instrument can survey vast swaths of the sky and generate multiple views of astronomical objects with unparalleled efficiency.
Looking nothing like a camera or other traditional imaging technologies – like CCDs in optical telescopes or single receivers in radio telescopes – this new Phased Array Feed design resembles a forest of miniature tree-like antennas evenly arranged on a meter-wide metal plate. When mounted on a single-dish radio telescope, specialized computers and signal processors are able to combine the signals among the antennas to create a virtual multi-pixel camera.
This type of instrument is particularly useful in a number of important areas of astronomical research, including the study of hydrogen gas raining in on our galaxy and in searches for enigmatic Fast Radio Bursts. ...
Performance of a Highly Sensitive, 19-Element, Dual-Polarization,
Cryogenic L-Band Phased Array Feed on the Green Bank Telescope - D. Anish Roshi et al
- Astronomical Journal 155(5):202 (May 2018) DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/aab965
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1803.04473 > 12 Mar 2018