An ultra-wide bandwidth (704 to 4032 MHz) receiver for the Parkes radio telescope

TL;DR

The paper presents a newly installed ultra-wideband receiver for the Parkes radio telescope, covering 704 to 4032 MHz, with detailed technical specifications, performance metrics, and data processing pipelines for astronomical research.

Contribution

It introduces a novel ultra-wide bandwidth receiver system for the Parkes telescope, detailing its design, performance, and data processing methods.

Findings

System temperature ~22K over 60% of the band

Receiver remains linear despite strong mobile signals

Quantified system performance including noise, beam shape, and calibration

Abstract

We describe an ultra-wide-bandwidth, low-frequency receiver ("UWL") recently installed on the Parkes radio telescope. The receiver system provides continuous frequency coverage from 704 to 4032 MHz. For much of the band (~60%) the system temperature is approximately 22K and the receiver system remains in a linear regime even in the presence of strong mobile phone transmissions. We discuss the scientific and technical aspects of the new receiver including its astronomical objectives, as well as the feed, receiver, digitiser and signal-processor design. We describe the pipeline routines that form the archive-ready data products and how those data files can be accessed from the archives. The system performance is quantified including the system noise and linearity, beam shape, antenna efficiency, polarisation calibration and timing stability.