Citation
Abstract
The master equatorial is a precision instrument located on top of a concrete and steel tubular tower that is physically independent of the 70-m antenna structure and designed to direct the antenna in a precision of a few arcseconds by means of an optical link. After more than 30 years of service, the master equatorial may have deteriorated to a point at which the performance is afiected. This article is intended to determine the accuracy of the instrument. The detailed setup of pointing-error measurements is presented. The results are shown graphically and discussed in depth with possible causes. The measurements show that the master equatorial has 4-mdeg random pointing error, which will not meet 32-GHz (Ka-band) pointing precision.
Keywords
measurement
master equatorial
antenna
Details
- Volume
- 42-143
- Published
- November 15, 2000
- Pages
- 1–15
- File Size
- 1.0 MB