The angular resolution, or ability of a radio telescope to distinguish fine detail in the sky, depends on the wavelength of observations divided by the size of the instrument. Yet even the largest antennas, when used at their shortest operating wavelength, have an angular resolution of only a few arc seconds, which is about 10 times poorer than the resolution of ground-based optical telescopes. Because radio telescopes operate at much longer wavelengths than do optical telescopes, radio telescopes need to be much larger than optical telescopes to achieve the same angular resolution.
At radio wavelengths, the distortions introduced by the atmosphere are less important than at optical wavelengths, and so the theoretical angular resolution of a radio telescope can in practice be achieved even for the largest dimensions. Also, because radio signals are easy to distribute over large distances without distortion, it is possible to build radio telescopes of essentially unlimited dimensions. In fact, the history of radio astronomy has been one of solving engineering problems to construct radio telescopes of continually increasing angular resolution.
The high angular resolution of radio telescopes is achieved by using the principles of interferometry to synthesize a very large effective aperture from a number of antennas. In a simple two-antenna radio interferometer, the signals from an unresolved, or “point,” source alternately arrive in phase (constructive interference) and out of phase (destructive interference) as Earth rotates and causes a change in the difference in path from the radio source to the two elements of the interferometer. This produces interference fringes in a manner similar to that in an optical interferometer. If the radio source has finite angular size, then the difference in path length to the elements of the interferometer varies across the source. The measured interference fringes from each interferometer pair thus depend on the detailed nature of the radio “brightness” distribution in the sky.
Each interferometer pair measures one “Fourier component” of the brightness distribution of the radio source. Work by Sir Martin Ryle and his colleagues in the1950s and ’60s showed that movable antenna elements combined with the rotation of Earth can sample a sufficient number of Fourier components with which to synthesize the effect of a large aperture and thereby reconstruct high-resolution images of the radio sky. The laborious computational task of doing Fourier transforms to obtain images from the interferometer data is accomplished with high-speed computers and the fast Fourier transform (FFT), a mathematical technique that is specially suited for computing discrete Fourier transforms. In recognition of his contributions to the development of the Fourier synthesis technique, more commonly known as aperture synthesis, or earth-rotation synthesis, Ryle was awarded the 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics.
During the 1960s the Swedish physicist Jan Hogbom developed a technique called CLEAN, which is used to remove the spurious responses from a celestial radio image caused by the use of discrete, rather than continuous, spacings in deriving the radio image. Further developments, based on a technique introduced in the early 1950s by the British scientists Roger Jennison and Francis Graham Smith, led to the concept of self-calibration, which uses the observed source as its own calibrator in order to remove errors in a radio image due to uncertainties in the response of individual antennas as well as small errors introduced by the propagation of radio signals through the terrestrial atmosphere. In this way radio telescopes are able to achieve extraordinary angular resolution and image quality that are not possible in any other wavelength band.
Very long baseline interferometry
In conventional interferometers and arrays, coaxial cable, waveguide, or even fibre-optic links are used to distribute a common local-oscillator reference signal to each antenna and also to return the received signal from an individual antenna to a central laboratory where it is correlated with the signals from other antennas. In cases in which antennas are spaced more than a few tens of kilometres apart, however, it becomes prohibitively expensive to employ real physical links to distribute the signals. Very high frequency (VHF) or ultrahigh frequency (UHF) radio links have been used, but the need for a large number of repeater stations makes this impractical for spacings greater than a few hundred kilometres.
Interferometer systems of essentially unlimited element separation can be formed by using the technique of very long baseline interferometry (VLBI). In early VLBI systems the signals received at each element were recorded by broad-bandwidth videotape recorders located at each antenna. More recently, with the advent of inexpensive, reliable computer disk drives, the data are recorded on disks. The disks are then transported to a common location where they are replayed and the signals combined to form interference fringes. The successful operation of a VLBI system requires that the tape recordings be synchronized within a few millionths of a second and that the local oscillator reference signal be stable to better than one part in a trillion. Recorded data from just a few hours of observation typically contain about one trillion bits of information, which is roughly equivalent to storing the entire contents of a modest-sized library. Hydrogen maser frequency standards are used to give a timing accuracy of only a few billionths of a second and a frequency stability of one part in a million billion.
Radar techniques
Techniques analogous to those used in military and civilian radar applications are sometimes employed with radio telescopes to study the surface of planets and asteroids in the solar system. By measuring the spectrum and the time of flight of signals reflected from planetary surfaces, it is possible to examine topographical features with a linear resolution as good as 1 km, deduce rates of rotation, and determine with great accuracy the distance to the planets. Radio signals reflected from the planets are weak, and high-power radar transmitters are needed in order to obtain measurable signal detections. The time it takes for a radar signal to travel to Venus and back, even at the closest approach of the planet to Earth, is about five minutes. For Saturn, it is more than two hours.
Major applications of radio telescopes
Radio telescopes permit astronomers to study many kinds of extraterrestrial radio sources. These astronomical objects emit radio waves by one of several processes, including (1) thermal radiation from solid bodies such as the planets, (2) thermal, or bremsstrahlung, radiation from hot gas in the interstellar medium, (3) synchrotron radiation from electrons moving at velocities near the speed of light in weak magnetic fields, (4) spectral line radiation from atomic or molecular transitions that occur in the interstellar medium or in the gaseous envelopes around stars, and (5) pulsed radiation resulting from the rapid rotation of neutron stars surrounded by an intense magnetic field and energetic electrons.
Radio telescopes are used to measure the surface temperatures of all the planets, as well as some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Radar measurements have revealed the rotation of Mercury, which was previously thought to keep the same side toward the Sun. Astronomers have also used radar observations to image features on the surface of Venus, which is completely obscured from visual scrutiny by the heavy cloud cover that permanently enshrouds the planet. Accurate measurements of the travel time of radar signals reflected from Venus when it is on the other side of the Sun from Earth have indicated that radio waves passing close to the Sun slow down owing to gravity and thereby provide a new independent test of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Broadband continuum emission throughout the radio-frequency spectrum is observed from a variety of stars (especially binary, X-ray, and other active stars), from supernova remnants, and from magnetic fields and relativistic electrons in the interstellar medium. The discovery of pulsars (short for pulsating radio stars) in 1967 revealed the existence of rapidly rotating neutron stars throughout the Milky Way Galaxy and led to the first observation of the effect of gravitational radiation.
Using radio telescopes equipped with sensitive spectrometers, radio astronomers have discovered about 150 separate molecules, including familiar chemical compounds such as water, formaldehyde, ammonia, methanol, ethyl alcohol, and carbon dioxide. The important spectral line of atomic hydrogen at 1,421.405 MHz (21-cm wavelength) is used to determine the motions of hydrogen clouds in the Milky Way Galaxy and other galaxies. This is done by measuring the change in the wavelength of the observed lines arising from the Doppler effect. It has been established from such measurements that the rotational velocities of the hydrogen clouds vary with distance from the galactic centre. The mass of a spiral galaxy can in turn be estimated using this velocity data. In this way radio telescopes show evidence for the presence of so-called dark matter by showing that the amount of starlight is insufficient to account for the large mass inferred from the rapid rotation curves.
Radio telescopes have discovered powerful radio galaxies and quasars far beyond the Milky Way Galaxy system. These cosmic objects have intense clouds of radio emission that extend hundreds of thousands of light-years away from a central energy source located in an active galactic nucleus (AGN), or quasar. Observations with high-resolution radio arrays show highly relativistic jets extending from an AGN to the radio lobes. (For more-specific information about quasars and other extragalactic radio sources, see galaxy: Quasars.)
Measurements made in 1965 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson using an experimental communications antenna at 3-cm wavelength located at Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey, detected the existence of a cosmic microwave background radiation with a temperature of 3 kelvins (K). This radiation, which comes from all parts of the sky, is the remaining radiation from the hot big bang, the primeval explosion from which the universe presumably originated 13.7 billion years ago. Satellite and ground-based radio telescopes have been used to measure the very small deviations from isotropy of the cosmic microwave background. This work has led to refined determination of the size, geometry, and age of the universe.