Documents

Tuesday, 13 March 2018

10. Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA)

Australia Telescope Compact Array or ATCA is located in Australia and is operated by CSIRO.

The red dot on the right end of Australia shows the position of the radio telescopes.

ATCA has six 22m diameter antennas to detect radio waves from space.
Radio waves have the frequency range of 3kHz to 300GHz. These radio telescopes have parabolic dishes to reflect the radio waves to receiver.
The dish of the radio telescope is usually not solid because it would be a waste of money and time to build one. Radio waves can easily get reflected from a mesh just like from a solid surface because of their longer wavelengths.

Another difference that is seen between Radio and optical telescopes is that radio telescopes are usually an array of antennas working together just like ATCA has six Radio antennas.

One of the radio antennas at Australia Telescope Compact Array
www.atnf.csiro.au
The size of these antennas is big because a larger collecting area can help in detecting more faint sources.

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Hertfordshire/M. Hardcastle et al.; Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA

The above image is showing the enormous jet of energy released by the Supermassive black hole. It's a composite image showing the data from Chandra X-ray Observatory in blue and the radio data from ATCA in red.

No comments:

Post a Comment