The Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) Alfonso Serrano is a bi-national (Mexico and USA) telescope facility constructed on the summit of Sierra Negra, at an altitude of 4600m, in the Mexican state of Puebla. The LMT is a 50-m diameter single-dish radio-telescope designed, constructed and optimized to conduct scientific observations using heterodyne and continuum receivers, as well as VLBI observations, at frequencies between ~70 and 350 GHz.
The LMT has an active surface control-system to correct gravitational and thermal deformations of the primary reflector to enable both night-time and daytime observations. We describe the current status and technical performance of the LMT, the instrumentation development program, and an on-going series of engineering and technical upgrades that will increase the optical efficiency and sensitivity of the telescope which will improve the overall scientific productivity and operational efficiency of the LMT.
KEYWORDS: Optical filters, Field programmable gate arrays, Spectrometers, Analog electronics, Digital signal processing, Clocks, Linear filtering, Radio astronomy, Finite impulse response filters, Heterodyning
Topologies of programming implemented in FPGAs are currently being developed with a combination of techniques to properly take advantage of hardware resources and maximize their capabilities. In this document we present a hardware architecture for real-time computation of FPGAs and readout applied to spectrometers in radio astronomy. The proposed architecture has been verified on Xilinx ZYNQ 7000 and Virtex-6 (XC6VSX475T1FFG1759C), which can run at a frequency up to 6 GHz and 4 GHz respectively with high accuracy. We present two spectrometers developed in FPGA’s architectures using polyphase filters and FFT on ROACH-2 and decimator with polyphase filters on Zedboard ZYNQ 7000. The spectrometer works continuously and has a remarkable total bandwidth of 200 MHz on ROACH2 and 23 MHz on ZYNQ 7000, resolved into 4096 channels. The firmware on ZYNQ board offer better resolution of 5.6 kHz than ROACH-2 of 49 kHz. DSP48 is the resource most used on ROACH, due to the firmware includes an FFT stage. We discuss the advantages and drawbacks of each approach.
An ambient-temperature Continuously Rotating Half-Wave Plate (CRHWP) modulates the input polarization signal thereby enabling removal of low-frequency (1/f) noise from polarized flux measurements. This 1/f noise arises from atmospheric turbulence as well as from effects intrinsic to certain detectors. Here, we describe the design and performance of the half wave plate rotator and achromatic half-wave plate for the the new imaging polarimeter, TolTEC. These components are mounted in front of the cryostat window and operate at ambient temperature. The Half-Wave Plate Rotator (HWPR) spins the half-wave plate at 2 revolutions per second. The rotation mechanism consists of nine air bearings to provide low-friction motion and a frameless torque motor to directly drive rotation. The orientation of the rotor and half-wave plate are recorded using a high-precision optical encoder. We review the experimental requirements and technical design of the rotator as well as the associated electronics, pneumatics, and software.
The Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) Alfonso Serrano is a bi-national (Mexico and USA) telescope facility constructed on the summit of Sierra Negra, at an altitude of 4600m, in the Mexican state of Puebla. The LMT is a 50-m diameter single-dish telescope, with an active surface control-system to correct gravitational and thermal deformations of the primary reflector, designed and optimized to conduct scientific observations using heterodyne and continuum receivers, as well as VLBI observations, at frequencies between ~70 and 350 GHz. We describe the current status and technical performance of the recently commissioned LMT 50-m, the instrumentation development program, and future engineering upgrades that will optimize the optical efficiency of the telescope and increase its scientific productivity.
The TolTEC camera is a next generation three-band imaging polarimeter for the Large Millimeter Telescope. With 7514 lumped element kinetic inductance detectors across three simultaneously observing passbands at 1.1 mm, 1.4 mm, and 2.0 mm, TolTEC has diffraction-limited beams with FWHM of 5, 7, and 11 arcsec, respectively. Herein, we cover a brief overview of the instrument along with the first quantitative measures of TolTEC’s performance at the LMT. We also provide initial reductions of commissioning targets - demonstrating TolTEC's ability to detect both faint and extended structures over a wide dynamic range of flux and angular scales.
The Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano (LMT) is a 50m-diameter radio telescope for millimeter-wave astronomy. In this paper we describe a number of initiatives underway to upgrade the antenna systems and permit scientific observations during daylight hours. We summarize recent efforts to characterize the thermal gradients that occur within the LMT structure and to identify important modes of surface deformation. The mitigation program involves use of the LMT's active surface to counteract the effects of measured thermal gradients within the antenna structure. It also includes active measures such as the installation of a ventilation system in the antenna backup structure. Prospects for additional active metrology measurements of the antenna surface for real-time surface corrections are also discussed.
The Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) Alfonso Serrano is a 50m-diameter single-dish radio telescope constructed at an altitude of 4600 meters on the summit of Volcan Sierra Negra, an extinct volcano in the Mexican state of Puebla. The LMT is a bi-national scientific collaboration between Mexico and the USA, led by the Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, Optica y Electronica (INAOE) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The telescope currently operates at wavelengths from 4mm to 1mm, and during the dry winter months the LMT site provides the highest levels of atmospheric transmission and potential future access to submillimeter observing windows. This paper describes the current status and scientific performance of the LMT, the suite of scientific instrumentation and future engineering upgrades that will optimize the optical efficiency of the telescope and increase its scientific productivity.
TolTEC is a three-band imaging polarimeter for the Large Millimeter Telescope. Simultaneously observing with passbands at 1.1mm, 1.4mm and 2.0mm, TolTEC has diffraction-limited beams with FWHM of 5, 7, and 11 arcsec, respectively. Over the coming decade, TolTEC will perform a combination of PI-led and Open-access Legacy Survey projects. Herein we provide an overview of the instrument and give the first quantitative measures of its performance in the lab prior to shipping to the telescope in 2021.
The Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) Alfonso Serrano is a bi-national (Mexico and USA) telescope facility operated by the Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, Optica y Electronica (INAOE) and the University of Massachusetts. The LMT is designed as a 50-m diameter single-dish millimeter-wavelength telescope that is optimized to conduct scientific observations at frequencies between ~70 and 350 GHz. The LMT is constructed on the summit of Sierra Negra at an altitude of 4600m in the Mexican state of Puebla. The site offers excellent mm-wavelength atmospheric transparency all-year round, and the opportunity to conduct submillimeter wavelength observations during the winter months. Following first-light observations in mid-2011, the LMT began regular scientific operations in 2014 with a shared-risk Early Science observing program using the inner 32-m diameter of the primary reflector with an active surface control system. The LMT has already performed successful VLBI observations at 3mm with the High Sensitivity Array and also at 1.3mm as part of the Event Horizon Telescope. Since early 2018 the LMT has begun full scientific operations as a 50-m diameter telescope, making the LMT 50-m the world´s largest single-dish telescope operating at 1.1mm. I will describe the current status of the telescope project, including the early scientific results from the LMT 50-m, as well the instrumentation development program, the plan to improve the overall performance of the telescope, and the on-going transition towards the formation of the LMT Observatory to support the scientific community in their use of the LMT to study the formation and evolution of structure at all cosmic epochs.
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