Active surface system for the new Sardinia Radiotelescope

In this paper we'll describe the active surface system that will be provided on the new Italian radiotelescope being in the phase of erection in the Sardinia Island. SRT (Sardinia Radiotelescope) will be a 64m shaped dish working up to 100GHz by exploiting the active surface facility designed by the authors. This facility will overcome the effects of gravity deformations on the antenna gain and will also be used to re-shape in a parabolic form the primary mirror, in order to avoid large phase error contribution on the antenna gain for the highest frequencies placed on the primary focus. Together with the description of the SRT system, a wide overview will be given regarding our previous installation of an active surface system, that can be seen like a prototype for SRT, mounted on the 32m dish of the Noto antenna.

[1]  M. Morsiani,et al.  An active surface for large reflector antennas , 2004, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine.

[2]  Alessandro Orfei,et al.  The Active Surface System on the Noto Radio Telescope , 2002 .