Radio Astronomy; A comparison
of radio telescope systems.
Supervised by: Dr Shirin Haque
Ramana Harrichan
GOAL: TO COMPARE THE DESIGNS OF THREE RADIO TELESCOPE
SYSTEMS AND SUGGEST A UNIQUE DESIGN FOR A TELESCOPE SYSTEM
The Radio Telescope Systems
Studied was;

The Very Large Array

The Allen Telescope Array

A do-it yourself experiment found on the internet.

These three experiments lead me to be inspired to create my own
design.
The unique
design proposed
was A
Pentagonal
Radio Telescope
Array. Illustrated
to the left.
The Components of The Pentagonal
Array Is Described As Follows;

The six red Circles represent The six
dishes set at an angular separation
of 72 degrees

The black lines connecting the
dishes to the grey rectangular box
is the connection to the satellite
signal meters.

Each Individual Dish Has A low
noise block down converter
mounted onto the arm of the
antenna.

The power supply for the system
should ideally be a 1110v ac
output.
The Shape of The Very Large Array is
preserved within the pentagonal Array.
The following are some of the ways
in which the Array can be used.
Solar Spectroscopy.

The design of the Pentagonal
Array was made in mind
particularly to be used as a Solar
spectroscope for the analysis of
the emission spectrum of the radio
band of the sun.
Radio Astronomical Observations

The Pentagonal array can also be
used for radio astronomy of other
astronomical phenomena if they
are luminous enough to be
observed such as the other
planets and stars.
The following is a
brief explanation
of the formation
of the sun and
radio waves from
it, the main
astronomical
object of interest.

Consider a primordial cloud of gas. The law of
gravitation is the catalyst for mass to start to
clump together and then because of the law of
angular momentum conservation this mass
would have started to spin and is still spinning to
this day because there are no significant
external forces.

This spinning of a mass of charged particles
around a centre of gravity acts analogously to
charge flowing in a loop from
electromagnetism. This would then produce
magnetic fields in loops through the centre
perpendicular to the axis of rotation out of one
the pole and into the other as analogous with
the magnetic field of earth. It is these magnetic
fields along with quantum mechanical
phenomena that excite electrons of atoms
present in the sun which causes the emission of
radio waves in order for electrons to transition
back into a less excited quantum state. It is
these radio emissions that the radio array is
observing is this project.
The Pentagonal Array design
specifications.

Each of the dishes are separated
72 degrees apart.

The Array consist of about 150 m of
coaxial cables for its wiring

The distance from the outer dish to
the center is 25 m


The effective diameter of the
Array is 50m.
The configuration of the array can
be varied to act as one large dish
and a spectroscope

The Array Can also be set up to
function as a miniature Very Large
Array.
In summary;
FOR MY PROJECT AFTER THE ANALYSIS OF 3 DIFFERENT TELESCOPE DESIGNS
THE DESIGN I PROPOSED WAS THE PENTAGONAL TELESCOPIC ARRAY TO BE
USED FOR SOLAR SPECTROSCOPY.