Optical characterization of the Tulancingo-I radio telescope and site: the potential for K-band operation

Miguel Velázquez; Eduardo Ibarra-Medel; Dirk De Villiers; Daniel Ferrusca; David M. Gale; David Hiriart; Andrea Leon Huerta; Stanley E. Kurtz; David Rojas; Tinus Stander

doi:10.1117/12.2630460

29 August 2022 Optical characterization of the Tulancingo-I radio telescope and site: the potential for K-band operation

Miguel Velázquez, Eduardo Ibarra-Medel, Dirk De Villiers, Daniel Ferrusca, David M. Gale, David Hiriart, Andrea Leon Huerta, Stanley E. Kurtz, David Rojas, Tinus Stander

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 12182, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes IX; 121822U (2022) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2630460
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2022, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Conference Poster

Abstract

Vintage 30-m class telecommunications antennas built in the 1960s and 1970s have been converted into radio telescopes in recent years, with especially notable conversions in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, Ghana, and most recently in Mexico. These antennas were designed and built for operation at C-Band, but in some cases the surface conditions are sufficiently good that observations at Ku-Band and possibly at K-Band may prove feasible. As described in [1] an antenna conversion project is underway for the Tulancingo-I telecommunications antenna, located in Tulancingo de Bravo in the Mexican state of Hidalgo. Although the antenna was in active use for several decades, it has been replaced by other communications technologies and has not been used since early in the new millennium. The antenna uses near-field, shaped Cassegrain optics, consisting of a shaped parabolic primary reflector and a shaped hyperbolic sub-reflector. The primary reflector is 32 meters in diameter with a nominal focal length of 9.6 meters. A tertiary reflector redirects the beam along the elevation axis, following the Nasmyth configuration. This paper describes our work to determine the feasibility of using the antenna reflector optics in the 18 – 24 GHz range of the K-Band. Both photogrammetry and laser tracker measurements were used to determine the geometrical relationship between the primary, sub-reflector, and tertiary surfaces. We use these results, reported in [4], along with computer simulations, to explore the potential of the Tulancingo-I antenna for KBand observing.

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Miguel Velázquez, Eduardo Ibarra-Medel, Dirk De Villiers, Daniel Ferrusca, David M. Gale, David Hiriart, Andrea Leon Huerta, Stanley E. Kurtz, David Rojas, and Tinus Stander "Optical characterization of the Tulancingo-I radio telescope and site: the potential for K-band operation", Proc. SPIE 12182, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes IX, 121822U (29 August 2022); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2630460

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