Arecibo Futures - NGAT: The Next Generation Arecibo Telescope
Channel: Michael Nolan
Date: 23/09/2021

A "Lunch seminar" sponsored by the Arecibo Science Advocacy Partnership over Zoom to present the results of the NSF-sponsored Arecibo Observatory Options workshop held in June 2021.

Lecture/Discussion: Thurs., 23rd September, 12 noon ET
Title:  NGAT: The Next Generation Arecibo Telescope
Speaker:  Dr. Anish Roshi, AO Radio Astronomy Head
Abstract:  The AO staff and members of the user community have proposed a new telescope concept, referred to as the “Next Generation Arecibo Telescope” (NGAT).  The talk will outline the case for the NGAT and discuss some of its novel science applications, its synergy with other upcoming projects, and its technical challenges.

Chat (lightly edited):
09:35:38  From Dana ... K8YUM : What is "fringe stopping"?
09:38:15  From Jonathan Friedman : What would be the plans for the HF radar in this scenario?
09:39:15  From Avi Desh : Compensation of changing relative delays to stay on the peak of correlation during the hour angle range... stopping the fringing.
09:41:14  From Nicole Lloyd-Ronning : https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScRy42nrq_G-nlZgYrZ-WrO5UCX58fH0gXcj5S1VxJIauIs2A/viewform
09:41:42  From Luca Olmi : Any estimate for ground thermal radiation entering the sidelobes or even the grating lobes at low elevations?
09:42:31  From Robert Minchin (he/him) : Do the plans include using a few larger dishes to fill in the zero-spacings, like ALMA? It seems that this could be done relatively easily here and would be valuable.
09:42:53  From Dana ... K8YUM : What kind of feed will yield a 100:1 frequency coverage?
09:42:55  From Chris Salter : Should we not be undertaking atmosphericf monitoring for transparency on a war footing?
09:44:44  From Tapasi Ghosh : Does the sinkhole play any part  in the design ?
09:45:49  From Chris Salter : With the dishes so close packed is there any concern of cross-talk between electronics of adjacent front-ends?
09:46:40  From desh : Will having a slightly different dish sizes on different segments, at a least two versions, help in overcoming ambiguity due to grating lobes?
09:46:55  From Chris Salter : Any comments on the contribution of NGAT to VLBI?
09:48:17  From Chris Salter : How about the polarization characteristics of NGAT?
09:48:56  From Hector Arce : Why should this be constructed at the AO site rather than in another site with better atmospheric transmission at higher frequencies and less RFI?
09:50:38  From Marshall Eubanks : Could, for example, the NGAT interoperate with 4 channel VGOS?
09:53:28  From Chris Salter : Could Anish elaborate on the pointing of NGAT please? (Especially given the extreme requirements t high frequencies.)
09:54:54  From Eliana Nossa : For the Space Sciences perspective, the operating AMISRs have range resolution of ~km vs the former Arecibo of 150m.  Also, they have not been able to observe the gyro-line and the plasma line observations are not that common (AO did it in real time).  What are the configurations of the new AMISR/NGAT that can allow the capabilities of the former 430MHz ISR radar?
09:55:29  From Dana ... K8YUM : Will a text transcription of Anish's speech be available, both for the presentation proper and for the Q&A session?
09:59:58  From Nicole Lloyd-Ronning : Feedback form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScRy42nrq_G-nlZgYrZ-WrO5UCX58fH0gXcj5S1VxJIauIs2A/viewform
10:00:33  From Nicole Lloyd-Ronning : Link again to feedback form: https://forms.gle/FM3zYcieLFjgMUXo8
10:02:35  From Nicole Lloyd-Ronning : areciboscience.org