The array configuration design of the Atacama Compact Array

Koh-Ichiro Morita; Mark A. Holdaway

doi:10.1117/12.788346

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17 July 2008 The array configuration design of the Atacama Compact Array

Koh-Ichiro Morita, Mark A. Holdaway

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Proceedings Volume 7012, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes II; 70120O (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.788346
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2008, Marseille, France

Abstract

The Atacama Compact Array (ACA) is an array composed of twelve 7-m dishes and four 12-m dishes. The ACA is designed for use as a part of the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter / Submillimeter Array) to provide high fidelity imaging capability for large extended objects. Basic parameters of the array configuration of the ACA were selected based on the analysis of the sensitivity in uv plane for mosaicing observations with the ACA and the ALMA. For detailed design of the sub-array with 7-m dishes (7-m Array), we adopted the compact spiral concept, which realizes higher uv response at the short uv spacings and better sidelobe performance. To satisfy the sky coverage requirement, the north-south elongation is needed. The 7-m Array was designed to have two configurations, one (Inner Array) is a compact spiral array with small north-south elongation (× 1.1) and the other (NS Array) is a dedicated configuration with large north-south elongation (× 1.7). In actual design, inner 6 antenna pads are shared by both configurations because of construction constraints.

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Koh-Ichiro Morita and Mark A. Holdaway "The array configuration design of the Atacama Compact Array", Proc. SPIE 7012, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes II, 70120O (17 July 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.788346

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