A Swedish heterodyne facility instrument for the APEX telescope
Journal article, 2008
In March 2008, the APEX facility instrument was installed on the telescope at the site of Lliano Chajnantor in northern Chile. The main objective of the paper is to introduce the new instrument to the radio astronomical community. It describes the hardware configuration and presents some initial results from the on-sky commissioning.
The heterodyne instrument covers frequencies between 211 GHz and 1390 GHz divided into four bands. The first three
bands are sideband-separating mixers operating in a single sideband mode and based on superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) tunnel junctions. The fourth band is a hot-electron bolometer, waveguide balanced mixer. All bands are integrated in a closedcycle temperature-stabilized cryostat and are cooled to 4 K.
We present results from noise temperature, sideband separation ratios, beam, and stability measurements performed on the telescope as a part of the receiver technical commissioning. Examples of broad extragalactic lines are also included.
detectors
radio lines
instrumentation
telescopes
spectroscopic
Author
Vessen Vassilev
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Advanced Receiver Development
Denis Meledin
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Advanced Receiver Development
Igor Lapkin
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Advanced Receiver Development
Victor Belitsky
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Advanced Receiver Development
Olle Nyström
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Advanced Receiver Development
Doug Henke
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Advanced Receiver Development
Alexey Pavolotskiy
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Advanced Receiver Development
Raquel Monje
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Advanced Receiver Development
Christophe Risacher
European Southern Observatory Santiago
Michael Olberg
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics
Magnus Strandberg
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Advanced Receiver Development
Erik Sundin
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Advanced Receiver Development
Mathias Fredrixon
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Advanced Receiver Development
Sven-Erik Ferm
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Advanced Receiver Development
Vincent Desmaris
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Advanced Receiver Development
Dimitar Milkov Dochev
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Advanced Receiver Development
Miroslav Pantaleev
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, National Facility for Radio Astronomy
Per Bergman
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, National Facility for Radio Astronomy
Hans Olofsson
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, National Facility for Radio Astronomy
Astronomy and Astrophysics
0004-6361 (ISSN) 1432-0746 (eISSN)
Vol. 490 3 1157-1163Subject Categories
Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology
Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering
DOI
10.1051/0004-6361:200810459