Astronomical observations in the molecule rich 3-mm window using large reflector antennas provide a unique view of the Universe. To efficiently carry out these observations gravitational and thermal deformations have to be corrected. Terrestrial laser scanners have been used to measure the deformations in large reflector antennas due to gravity, but have not yet been used for measuring thermal deformations. In this work, we investigate the use of a terrestrial laser scanner to measure thermal deformations on the primary reflector of the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). Our method involves the use of differential measurements to reduce the systematic effects of the terrestrial laser scanner. We use the active surface of the primary reflector of the GBT to validate our method and explore its limitations. We find that when using differential measurements it is possible to accurately measure deformations corresponding to different Zernike polynomials down to an amplitude of 60  m. The difference between the amplitudes of known deformations and those measured are m when the wind speed is  m s . From these differences we estimate that it should be possible to bring the surface error of the GBT down to m. This suggests that using a commercial off-the-shelf terrestrial laser scanner it is possible to measure deformations induced by thermal gradients on a large parabolic reflector.

With a 100mx110m off-axis paraboloid dish, the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) is the largest fully steerable radio telescope on Earth. A major challenge facing large ground-based radio telescopes is achieving sufficient pointing accuracy for observing at high frequencies, up to 116 GHz in the case of the GBT. Accurate pointing requires the ability to blindly acquire source locations and perform ad hoc corrections determined by observing nearby calibrator sources in order to obtain a starting position accurate to within a small margin of error of the target's location. The required pointing accuracy is dependent upon the half-power beamwidth, and for the higher-frequency end of GBT observing, this means that pointing must be accurate to within a few arcseconds RMS. The GBT's off-axis design is advantageous in that it eliminates blockage of the dish and reduces sidelobe interference, and there is no evidence that the resulting asymmetric structure adversely affects pointing accuracy. However, factors such as gravitational flexure, thermal deformation, azimuth track tilt and irregularity, and small misalignments and offset errors within the telescope's structure cause pointing inaccuracies. A pointing model was developed for the GBT to correct for these effects. The model utilizes standard geometrical corrections along with metrology data from the GBT's structural temperature sensors and data from measurements of the track levels. In this paper we provide a summary of the GBT's pointing model and associated corrections, as well as a discussion of relevant metrology systems and an analysis of its current nighttime pointing accuracy.

To carry out astronomical observations in the molecule rich 3 mm window the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) compensates for gravitational and weather induced deformations of its primary reflector. Terrestrial laser scanners (TLSs) offer a fast and reliable means of measuring these deformations, but their use has been limited to measuring gravitational deformations thus far due to the large systematics inherent to their construction. The laser antenna surface scanning instrument (LASSI) on the GBT uses a TLS to measure weather induced deformations. The LASSI removes the TLS systematics by taking the difference between scans. We use the active surface (AS) on the GBT to validate this strategy and find that the LASSI can accurately measure deformations corresponding to different Zernike polynomials with amplitudes between 60 μm and 550 μm. We estimate that the wavefront error introduced by the LASSI to the surface is 100 ± 30 μm, root-mean-squared (rms), which would result in a total surface error of 250 μm rms. This suggests that using the LASSI to measure, and the AS to correct, for weather induced deformations is a viable method to efficiently carry-out day time 3 mm observations with the GBT.

The Green Bank Observatory plans to construct a 144-element radio camera for the GBT, called Argus+, to enable wide-field spectroscopic studies in the 3mm band (74-116 GHz). Argus+ will provide high spatial resolution maps of interstellar molecules from the scale of entire galactic disks to the sub-parsec scale of filaments and dense cloud cores.

We present deep CCS and HC 7 N observations of the L1495-B218 filaments in the Taurus molecular cloud obtained using the K -band focal plane array on the 100 m Green Bank Telescope. We observed the L1495-B218 filaments in CCS J N = 2 1 –1 0 and HC 7 N J = 21−20 with a spectral resolution of 0.038 km s −1 and an angular resolution of 31″. We observed strong CCS emission in both evolved and young regions and weak emission in two evolved regions. HC 7 N emission is observed only in L1495A-N and L1521D. We find that CCS and HC 7 N intensity peaks do not coincide with NH 3 or dust continuum intensity peaks. We also find that the fractional abundance of CCS does not show a clear correlation with the dynamical evolutionary stage of dense cores. Our findings and chemical modeling indicate that the fractional abundances of CCS and HC 7 N are sensitive to the initial gas-phase C/O ratio, and they are good tracers of young condensed gas only when the initial C/O is close to solar value. Kinematic analysis using multiple lines, including NH 3 , HC 7 N, CCS, CO, HCN, and HCO + , suggests that there may be three different star formation modes in the L1495-B218 filaments. At the hub of the filaments, L1495A/B7N has formed a stellar cluster with large-scale inward flows (fast mode), whereas L1521D, a core embedded in a filament, is slowly contracting because of its self-gravity (slow mode). There is also one isolated core that appears to be marginally stable and may undergo quasi-static evolution (isolated mode).

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This paper provides a brief overview of the current Green Bank Telescope science program, and an update on technical developments performed since 2010.

MUSTANG-2 is a 90 GHz feedhorn-coupled, microwave SQUID-multiplexed TES bolometer array in the final stages of development for operation on the 100-m Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope. We present the camera design and report the performance during the first season of observation, in which 64 of the available 215 pixels in the focal plane were populated. We highlight the microwave multiplexing readout technology, which is envisioned as a path to read out the next generation of large pixel-count cryogenic focal planes. In this regard, MUSTANG2 is a pathfinder for this multiplexing technology. We present noise spectra which show no detector noise degradation when read out with microwave SQUID multiplexing, and we present first light images of Jupiter and M87, which demonstrate the end-to-end system performance.

ABSTRACT We use time-domain electromagnetic simulations to determine the spectral characteristics of the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Arrays (HERA) antenna. These simulations are part of a multi-faceted campaign to determine the effectiveness of the dish’s design for obtaining a detection of redshifted 21 cm emission from the epoch of reionization. Our simulations show the existence of reflections between HERA’s suspended feed and its parabolic dish reflector that fall below −40 dB at 150 ns and, for reasonable impedance matches, have a negligible impact on HERA’s ability to constrain EoR parameters. It follows that despite the reflections they introduce, dishes are effective for increasing the sensitivity of EoR experiments at a relatively low cost. We find that electromagnetic resonances in the HERA feed’s cylindrical skirt, which is intended to reduce cross coupling and beam ellipticity, introduces significant power at large delays (−40 dB at 200 ns), which can lead to some loss of measurable Fourier modes and a modest reduction in sensitivity. Even in the presence of this structure, we find that the spectral response of the antenna is sufficiently smooth for delay filtering to contain foreground emission at line-of-sight wave numbers below k ∥ ≲ 0.2 h Mpc−1, in the region where the current PAPER experiment operates. Incorporating these results into a Fisher Matrix analysis, we find that the spectral structure observed in our simulations has only a small effect on the tight constraints HERA can achieve on parameters associated with the astrophysics of reionization.

The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) is a radio interferometer aiming to detect the power spectrum of 21 cm fluctuations from neutral hydrogen from the Epoch of Reionization (EOR). Drawing on lessons from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) and the Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization (PAPER), HERA is a hexagonal array of large (14 m diameter) dishes with suspended dipole feeds. Not only does the dish determine overall sensitivity, it affects the observed frequency structure of foregrounds in the interferometer. This is the first of a series of four papers characterizing the frequency and angular response of the dish with simulations and measurements. We focus in this paper on the angular response (i.e., power pattern), which sets the relative weighting between sky regions of high and low delay, and thus, apparent source frequency structure. We measure the angular response at 137 MHz using the ORBCOMM beam mapping system of Neben et al. We measure a collecting area of 93 m^2 in the optimal dish/feed configuration, implying HERA-320 should detect the EOR power spectrum at z 9 with a signal-to-noise ratio of 12.7 using a foreground avoidance approach with a single season of observations, and 74.3 using a foreground subtraction approach. Lastly we study the impact of these beam measurements on the distribution of foregrounds in Fourier space.

We report on the development of Argus, a 16-pixel spectrometer, which will enable fast astronomical imaging over the 85–116 GHz band. Each pixel includes a compact heterodyne receiver module, which integrates two InP MMIC low-noise amplifiers, a coupled-line bandpass filter and a sub-harmonic Schottky diode mixer. The receiver signals are routed to and from the multi-chip MMIC modules with multilayer high frequency printed circuit boards, which includes LO splitters and IF amplifiers. Microstrip lines on flexible circuitry are used to transport signals between temperature stages. The spectrometer frontend is designed to be scalable, so that the array design can be reconfigured for future instruments with hundreds of pixels. Argus is scheduled to be commissioned at the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in late 2014. Preliminary data for the first Argus pixels are presented.

MUSTANG 2 is a 223 element focal plane that operates between 75 and 105 GHz on the 100 meter Green Bank Telescope. It shares many of the science goals of its predecessor, MUSTANG, but will have fifteen times the sensitivity and five times the field-of-view. Angular scales from 900 to 60 will be recovered with high fidelity providing a unique overlap between high resolution instruments such as ALMA and lower resolution single dish telescopes such as ACT or SPT. Individual TES bolometers are placed behind feedhorns spaced by 1.9λ f and are read out using a microwave SQUID multiplexing system.

This paper describes MUSTANG 2, a 338 element focal plane array that is being built for the Green Bank Telescope. Each element consists of a profiled feedhorn coupled to two transition edge sensor bolometers, one for each polarization. Initial deployment will be with 32 detectors, but once fully populated, MUSTANG 2 will be capable of mapping a \(8'\times 8'\) area to \(23~\upmu \)Jy in 1 h with good image fidelity on angular scales from \(9''\) to \(6'\). As well as an instrument overview, the choice of bandpass and the design of the feeds, detectors and readout are given.

We report the design and development of a self-contained multi-band receiver (MBR) system, intended for use with a single large aperture to facilitate sensitive & high time-resolution observations simultaneously in 10 discrete frequency bands sampling a wide spectral span (100-1500 MHz) in a nearly log-periodic fashion. The development of this system was primarily motivated by need for tomographic studies of pulsar polar emission regions. Although the system design is optimized for the primary goal, it is also suited for several other interesting astronomical investigations. The system consists of a dual-polarization multi-band feed (with discrete responses corresponding to the 10 bands pre-selected as relatively RFI-free), a common wide-band RF front-end, and independent back-end receiver chains for the 10 individual sub-bands. The raw voltage time-sequences corresponding to 16 MHz bandwidth each for the two linear polarization channels and the 10 bands, are recorded at the Nyquist rate simultaneously. We present the preliminary results from the tests and pulsar observations carried out with the Green Bank Telescope using this receiver. The system performance implied by these results, and possible improvements are also briefly discussed.

This document will discuss the efforts and progress made in understanding, modeling, quantifying, and mitigating the stresses and behavior induced by creep motion in the 100 meter Green Bank Telescope's (GBT) azimuth track. From its commissioning the GBT azimuth track has been plagued by the side effects of creep motion induced by the 1,000,000 lb rolling load of each of its wheels. This paper will discuss the degrading effects of creep motion, similarities seen in other track systems, and the mitigation efforts employed to maintain track performance. It will also discuss efforts to understand and numerically model the track behavior, efforts to bound stresses using classical calculations, and suggest the direction for further work.