Evaluating a strategy for measuring deformations of the primary reflector of the Green Bank telescope using a terrestrial laser scanner

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that a commercial terrestrial laser scanner can effectively measure thermal deformations of the Green Bank Telescope's primary reflector, achieving high accuracy and aiding in surface error correction.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel application of terrestrial laser scanners for measuring thermal deformations in large radio telescope reflectors, validated on the GBT.

Findings

Differential measurements reduce systematic errors.

Deformations down to 60 μm can be accurately measured.

Surface error can be estimated at 240 ± 6 μm.

Abstract

Astronomical observations in the molecule rich 3 mm window using large reflector antennas provide a unique view of the Universe. To efficiently carry out these observations gravitational and thermal deformations have to be corrected. Terrestrial laser scanners have been used to measure the deformations in large reflector antennas due to gravity, but have not yet been used for measuring thermal deformations. In this work we investigate the use of a terrestrial laser scanner to measure thermal deformations on the primary reflector of the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). Our method involves the use of differential measurements to reduce the systematic effects of the terrestrial laser scanner. We use the active surface of the primary reflector of the GBT to validate our method and explore its limitations. We find that when using differential measurements it is possible to accurately measure deformations corresponding to different Zernike polynomials down to an amplitude of 60 $\mu$m. The difference between the amplitudes of known deformations and those measured are $<140~\mu$m when the wind speed is $\lesssim2$ m s$^{-1}$. From these differences we estimate that it should be possible to bring the surface error of the GBT down to $240\pm6~\mu$m. This suggests that using a commercial off-the-shelf terrestrial laser scanner it is possible to measure deformations induced by thermal gradients on a large parabolic reflector.