Pharos 2 Upgraded CBand PAF Simon Melhuish Mike
Pharos 2 – Upgraded C-Band PAF Simon Melhuish, Mike D’Cruze, Keith Grainge, Michael Keith and Mark Mc. Culloch, Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, Manchester, UK
Origins • FP 5 RTD programme FARADAY – – – Jodrell Bank Observatory (JBO) University of Birmingham Istituto di Radioastronomia (INAF), Microwave Engineering Centre for Space Applications (MECSA) Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy (ASTRON) • + others
Pharos block diagram – original design
Pharos – original design • Radome – Perspex • IR Filter – Polystyrene • LNAs – In-house • Beam-former – Analogue
“Pharos 2” – Why Upgrade? • • Radome noise can be reduced IR load can be reduced with RT-MLI LNA state-of-the-art has improved Old analogue beam-former never fully populated – Performance not so good either
Pharos 2 – New Configuration • • New radome (NRC) New IR filter (see e. g. Choi et al. ) New LNF LNAs + Chalmers / LNF bias supply Italian warm electronics & beam-former (i. TPM)
New – IR Filter • Polystyrene foam – “Depron” • Demonstrated improvement over original IR filter • More disks → greater improvement • More disks added since test
New LNAs (LNF-LNC 4_8 C_2)
New Bias Supply – PSX
Dewar contents old / new
Test Results - Naked elements
Test Results - Analogue beam-former
Test Results - Comparison with old LNAs
Next steps New back-end by INAF
Where to Put It? • Original plan – Lovell Telescope, 76 m • Suggested – Noto, 32 m • Final – 25 -m Merlin telescope at Pickmere
New Location
Installation into Focus Box
Next steps Observations • During EVN session 3 • October / November 2019 • Crane is booked!
What then (in 2020)? • Replace the radome – Re-measure Tsys • Replace Vivaldi array – S-band prototype (later talk) • S-band LNF LNAs • INAF back-end covers S-band
- Slides: 19
