4 ms·
I was not proposing carrying a dish, instead lay long runs of wires on the surface in whatever pattern you like. But if you want a parabaloid, chose a darkside
by imglorp 6y ago
I was not proposing carrying a dish, instead lay long runs of wires on the surface in whatever pattern you like. But if you want a parabaloid, chose a darkside crater and do the Arecebo thing there.
Also, some frequencies are not possible on Earth at all due to ionosphere attenuation.
- giantrobot 6y agoSorry I was under the impression you were talking about a radio telescope and not just a big shitty antenna. /s Wire antennas for a radio telescope are not a great solution. A giant array of antennas (still a lot of mass to lift) could have decent angular resolution but not great seeing power. The seeing power of a telescope is a function of the totally collector surface area. A big dish literally reflects photons that hit any part of the surface. A wire antenna with no reflector has a teeny tiny surface area. For an antenna array you'd still need steering sturdy mounts, steering systems, and power for those steering systems. Just using big wires means you can't really steer the focus and has far less gain than an array and way less than a system using reflectors. TANSTAAFL.