Radio Interferometer Telescope
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[edit] Introduction
This project deals with making a astronomical interferometer (a type of a radio telescope) based on the techniques of aperture synthesis. This telescope is designed to work at a radio frequency of 74 MHz. We are making various parts of this telescope at BITS-Pilani, Goa Campus.
The basic idea is to measure complex cross-correlation coefficients between voltage signals from two antennas separated by a distance, b. This technique, called interferometry, is used to obtain higher angular resolution, which may not be attainable due to modest sizes of individual antenna (or dishes) involved in observations.
[edit] Methodology
We plan to use half-wave dipole antennas to sense electromagnetic waves from astronomical sources at 74 MHz. This signal will be down-converted to 1.9 MHz using a mixer, after necessary amplification. A small band around 73.9 MHz, of about 0.25 MHz will be recorded using a direct-voltage recorder system. This raw, 2-bit quantized data will be stored on a PC for a later processing by customized computer programs.
These programs have been termed as `software correlator'. Our code for cross-correlation is based on lookup-table approach, details of which will be available on a separate page titled BITS Correlator.
