Control system performance of a 7.3-meter radio telescope converted from telecommunication antenna to radio astronomy purposes in Malaysia

Abstract

We present a crucial step in converting a commercial telecommunication antenna system into a radio astronomy telescope. This step involved the development of a newly installed and simple control system to manage the telescope movement with relatively good pointing accuracy. The control system was designed using a programmable logic controller (PLC) that is robust and affordable. Based on the performance testing, this control system achieved average accuracies of 0.95 and 1.083 arcmin in azimuth and elevation positioning respectively, and an RMS of 9 arcmin across the open sky. In addition, it reached average rotation speeds of about 5.4, 2.4, and 4.8 arcmin/s for azimuth, elevation, and tracking rate, respectively. The results also showed that the converted radio telescope has an acceptable tracking accuracy of errors below 10% of the antenna half-power bandwidth at a frequency of 1.4 GHz while generating movement speed suitable for basic radio astronomy observations. These results show that this converted small radio telescope has the basic requirements for tracking and imaging celestial radio objects, primarily via interferometry with larger radio telescopes at low observation frequencies.