The synthesis telescope at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory
T. L. Landecker, P. E. Dewdney, T. A. Burgess, A. D. Gray, L. A. Higgs, A. P. Hoffmann, G. J. Hovey, D. R. Karpa, J. D. Lacey, N. Prowse, C. R. Purton, R. S. Roger, A. G. Willis, W. Wyslouzil, D. Routledge, J. F. Vaneldik;
AaAS, 2000, 145, 509
ABSTRACT:We describe an aperture synthesis radio telescope optimized for studies of the Galactic interstellar medium (ISM), providing the ability to
image extended structures with high angular resolution over wide
fields.
The telescope produces images of atomic hydrogen emission using the 21-cm
\ion{H}{i} spectral line, and, simultaneously, continuum emission in two bands
centred at 1420 MHz and 408 MHz, including linearly polarized emission at 1420
MHz, with synthesized beams of 1' and 3.4' at the respective frequencies.
A
full synthesis can achieve a continuum sensitivity (rms) of 0.28 mJy/beam
at 1420 MHz and 3.8 mJy/beam at 408 MHz, and the 256-channel \ion{H}{i}
spectrometer has an rms sensitivity of 3.5B-0.5sin delta K per channel,
for total spectrometer bandwidth B MHz and declination delta .
The tuning
range of the telescope permits studies of Galactic and nearby extragalactic
objects.
The array uses 9 m antennas, which provide very wide fields of view of
3.1\degr\ and 9.6\degr\ (at the 10% level), at the two frequencies, and also allow
data to be gathered on short baselines, yielding extremely good
sensitivity to extended structure.
Single-antenna data are also routinely
incorporated into images to ensure complete coverage of emission on all angular
scales down to the resolution limit.
In this paper we describe the telescope
and its receiver and correlator systems in detail, together with
calibration and observing strategies that make this instrument an efficient
survey machine.
KEYWORDS: radio telescopes, aperture synthesis, wide-field imaging, \ion{h}{i} spectroscopy
CODE: landecker2000