8th RadioNet Engineering Forum Workshop on Upgrading the Horizon: New Radiotelescopes and Instrumentation for Astronomy and Geodetic Technology
- by Reinhard Keller, MPIfR Bonn, Germany.
This double feature workshop on new developments in radio astronomy telescopes and instrumentation was held on November 24 and 25, 2008 at the Centro Astronomico di Yebes in Yebes, Spain. This meeting was the eights and last in a successful series of engineering workshops sponsored and organized by the EU Consortium RadioNet within the Sixth Framework Program of the European Commission. The workshop gave a broad view of various developments at different institutions related to antenna and receiver equipment.
In the first section on antennas, recent and upcoming developments were presented. A special focus was on the new geodetic VLBI project “VLBI2010”. I.e. Hajo Hase stressed the need of very fast antennas for observing many sources per day to increase the accuracy of geodetic measurements. This new approach looks for observation times of 30s including slew and trek per source at many sources. New optics with an “elliptical focus” for low blockage through secondary mirror will be realized in the next years. This is only one of many topics addressed in the workshop that show the interdisciplinary synergy of developments in radio astronomy and geodesy.
In the instrumentation section of the workshop the need of more and more bandwidth dominated the talks. Developments on broad band feed systems as well as broad band receivers were presented and vivid discussions arose in the breaks between the presentations. It was clear that one of the biggest challenges of the future will be more and more instantaneous bandwidth in radio astronomy and geodetic receivers at all frequency bands.
The workshop had a very dense and informative program. Many topics of currently ongoing antenna and receiver developments were addressed. From SKA developments over the new Yebes 40m antenna to the refurbishing project of the Plateau de Bure interferometer a wide variety of antennas projects where covered. The presentations on ongoing receiver projects showed the huge amount of developments taking place around Europe. Vital discussions showed the need of information exchange between the various institutes and many bilateral discussions installed future collaborations between institutes.
I'd like to the local organisation committee for the perfect organisation of the whole workshop, the transportation and accomodation as well as the excellent workshop dinner.