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What is the advantage of having one big telescope instead of 100 small "telescopes" that make one big radio interferometry telescope?
by Atheros 7y ago
What is the advantage of having one big telescope instead of 100 small "telescopes" that make one big radio interferometry telescope?
- ssivark 7y agoJust much larger actual signal collection area — means higher SNR and weaker signals can be detected. Don’t have to worry about complicated interferometry.
- autocorr 7y agoOne advantage is that it is much easier to create multi-pixel receiver systems. Having two receivers at the focus is like having two telescopes! So for survey science, it is much more economical than building 50 telescopes with a total equivalent area and one receiver each than building one telescope and 50 receivers. However the main reasons we often don't build big single dishes is that (1) it's very hard to keep the surfaces from deforming from gravity and heat (the GBT for example needs to be accurate to 0.2mm over two acres of surface), and (2) the bigger the telescope gets the bigger the sail with respect to the wind, which makes it hard to point and keep the pointing accurate.