2,270 research outputs found
MUSTANG: 90 GHz Science with the Green Bank Telescope
MUSTANG is a 90 GHz bolometer camera built for use as a facility instrument
on the 100 m Robert C. Byrd Green Bank radio telescope (GBT). MUSTANG has an 8
by 8 focal plane array of transition edge sensor bolometers read out using
time-domain multiplexed SQUID electronics. As a continuum instrument on a large
single dish MUSTANG has a combination of high resolution (8") and good
sensitivity to extended emission which make it very competitive for a wide
range of galactic and extragalactic science. Commissioning finished in January
2008 and some of the first science data have been collected.Comment: 9 Pages, 5 figures, Presented at the SPIE conference on astronomical
instrumentation in 200
Out-Of-Focus Holography at the Green Bank Telescope
We describe phase-retrieval holography measurements of the 100-m diameter
Green Bank Telescope using astronomical sources and an astronomical receiver
operating at a wavelength of 7 mm. We use the technique with parameterization
of the aperture in terms of Zernike polynomials and employing a large defocus,
as described by Nikolic, Hills & Richer (2006). Individual measurements take
around 25 minutes and from the resulting beam maps (which have peak signal to
noise ratios of 200:1) we show that it is possible to produce low-resolution
maps of the wavefront errors with accuracy around a hundredth of a wavelength.
Using such measurements over a wide range of elevations, we have calculated a
model for the wavefront-errors due to the uncompensated gravitational
deformation of the telescope. This model produces a significant improvement at
low elevations, where these errors are expected to be the largest; after
applying the model, the aperture efficiency is largely independent of
elevation. We have also demonstrated that the technique can be used to measure
and largely correct for thermal deformations of the antenna, which often exceed
the uncompensated gravitational deformations during daytime observing.
We conclude that the aberrations induced by gravity and thermal effects are
large-scale and the technique used here is particularly suitable for measuring
such deformations in large millimetre wave radio telescopes.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures (accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysics
Field Scanner Design for MUSTANG of the Green Bank Telescope
MUSTANG is a bolometer camera for the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) working at a
frequency of 90 GHz. The detector has a field of view of 40 arcseconds. To
cancel out random emission change from atmosphere and other sources, requires a
fast scanning reflecting system with a few arcminute ranges. In this paper, the
aberrations of an off-axis system are reviewed. The condition for an optimized
system is provided. In an optimized system, as additional image transfer
mirrors are introduced, new aberrations of the off-axis system may be
reintroduced, resulting in a limited field of view. In this paper, different
scanning mirror arrangements for the GBT system are analyzed through the ray
tracing analysis. These include using the subreflector as the scanning mirror,
chopping a flat mirror and transferring image with an ellipse mirror, and
chopping a flat mirror and transferring image with a pair of face-to-face
paraboloid mirrors. The system analysis shows that chopping a flat mirror and
using a well aligned pair of paraboloids can generate the required field of
view for the MUSTUNG detector system, while other systems all suffer from
larger off-axis aberrations added by the system modification. The spot diagrams
of the well aligned pair of paraboloids produced is only about one Airy disk
size within a scanning angle of about 3 arcmin.Comment: 7 pages, 9 figure
GHIGLS: HI mapping at intermediate Galactic latitude using the Green Bank Telescope
This paper introduces the data cubes from GHIGLS, deep Green Bank Telescope
surveys of the 21-cm line emission of HI in 37 targeted fields at intermediate
Galactic latitude. The GHIGLS fields together cover over 1000 square degrees at
9.55' spatial resolution. The HI spectra have an effective velocity resolution
about 1.0 km/s and cover at least -450 < v < +250 km/s. GHIGLS highlights that
even at intermediate Galactic latitude the interstellar medium is very complex.
Spatial structure of the HI is quantified through power spectra of maps of the
column density, NHI. For our featured representative field, centered on the
North Ecliptic Pole, the scaling exponents in power-law representations of the
power spectra of NHI maps for low, intermediate, and high velocity gas
components (LVC, IVC, and HVC) are -2.86 +/- 0.04, -2.69 +/- 0.04, and -2.59
+/- 0.07, respectively. After Gaussian decomposition of the line profiles, NHI
maps were also made corresponding to the narrow-line and broad-line components
in the LVC range; for the narrow-line map the exponent is -1.9 +/- 0.1,
reflecting more small scale structure in the cold neutral medium (CNM). There
is evidence that filamentary structure in the HI CNM is oriented parallel to
the Galactic magnetic field. The power spectrum analysis also offers insight
into the various contributions to uncertainty in the data. The effect of 21-cm
line opacity on the GHIGLS NHI maps is estimated.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, 2015 July 16.
32 pages, 21 figures (Fig. 10 new). Minor revisions from review, particularly
Section 8 and Appendix C; results unchanged. Additional surveys added and
made available; new Appendix B. Added descriptions of available FITS files
and links to four illustrative movies on enhanced GHIGLS archive
(www.cita.utoronto.ca/GHIGLS/
Twenty-One Millisecond Pulsars in Terzan 5 Using the Green Bank Telescope
We have discovered 21 millisecond pulsars (MSPs) in the globular cluster
Terzan 5 using the Green Bank Telescope, bringing the total of known MSPs in
Terzan 5 to 24. These discoveries confirm fundamental predictions of globular
cluster and binary system evolution. Thirteen of the new MSPs are in binaries,
of which two show eclipses and two have highly eccentric orbits. The
relativistic periastron advance for the two eccentric systems indicates that at
least one of these pulsars has a mass >1.68 Msun at 95% confidence. Such large
neutron star masses constrain the equation of state of matter at or beyond the
nuclear equilibrium density.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures. Accepted by Science. Published electronically
via Science Express 13 Jan 200
The Megamaser Cosmology Project. V. An Angular Diameter Distance to NGC 6264 at 140 Mpc
We present the direct measurement of the Hubble constant, yielding the direct
measurement of the angular-diameter distance to NGC 6264 using the HO
megamaser technique. Our measurement is based on sensitive observations of the
circumnuclear megamaser disk from four observations with the Very Long Baseline
Array, the Green Bank Telescope and the Effelsberg Telescope. We also monitored
the maser spectral profile for 2.3 years using the Green Bank Telescope to
measure accelerations of maser lines by tracking their line-of-sight velocities
as they change with time. The measured accelerations suggest that the systemic
maser spots have a significantly wider radial distribution than in the
archetypal megamaser in NGC 4258. We model the maser emission as arising from a
circumnuclear disk with orbits dominated by the central black hole. The best
fit of the data gives a Hubble constant of 689 km s
Mpc, which corresponds to an angular-diameter distance of 14419
Mpc. In addition, the fit also gives a mass of the central black hole of
(3.090.42) . The result demonstrates the
feasibility of measuring distances to galaxies located well into the Hubble
flow by using circumnuclear megamaser disks.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figures, Accepted by Ap
Capabilities of Earth-based radar facilities for near-Earth asteroid observations
We evaluated the planetary radar capabilities at Arecibo, the Goldstone 70-m
DSS-14 and 34-m DSS-13 antennas, the 70-m DSS-43 antenna at Canberra, the Green
Bank Telescope, and the Parkes Radio Telescope in terms of their relative
sensitivities and the number of known near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) detectable
per year in monostatic and bistatic configurations. In the 2015 calendar year,
monostatic observations with Arecibo and DSS-14 were capable of detecting 253
and 131 NEAs respectively, with signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) greater than
30/track. Combined, the two observatories were capable of detecting 276 NEAs.
Of these, Arecibo detected 77 and Goldstone detected 32, or 30% and 24% the
numbers that were possible. The two observatories detected an additional 18 and
7 NEAs respectively, with SNRs of less than 30/track. This indicates that a
substantial number of potential targets are not being observed. The bistatic
configuration with DSS-14 transmitting and the Green Bank Telescope receiving
was capable of detecting about 195 NEAs, or ~50% more than with monostatic
observations at DSS-14. Most of the detectable asteroids were targets of
opportunity that were discovered less than 15 days before the end of their
observing windows. About 50% of the detectable asteroids have absolute
magnitudes > 25, which corresponds diameters < ~30 m.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, Accepted to A
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