9. ESCS
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9. ESCS |
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For over 25 years the Italian 32-m radiotelescopes at
Medicina and Noto have successfully participated in various
VLBI networks.
In 2007 we embarked on a project to improve the potential of
single-dish
observations. The advent of new hardware (multi-feed
receivers, backends, etc...) also required the upgrade of
the telescope guiding software, to make maximum usage of the
newly developed instrumentation and to push the performance
of both the antennas to their theoretical limits.
The contemporary construction of the Sardinia Radio
Telescope (SRT) introduced various synergies and eventually
led to the constitution of the DISCOS project (Development of the Italian Single-dish COntrol
System) aimed at the creation of an entirely new
and independent telescope driving system, which is able to
control the antennas in all aspects for any single-dish
observing mode.
The system flavour developed for
Medicina and Noto is named ESCS
(Enhanced Single-dish
Control System).
It has been successfully employed in several observations
(mainly continuum On-The-Fly cross-scans and maps).
The
system is now available in Medicina and allows users to
employ the total power analog backend and the XARCOS spectrometer.
Its installation at Noto, for the first test session with
that telescope, has been recently carried out.
PLEASE
NOTICE: the system is still evolving. Be sure to
use the up-to-date user's guide, before carrying out your observations.
If in doubt, contact
us.
Documents:
--> ESCS
user's guide User's
guide for the execution of single-dish continuum observations
with ESCS (links to useful documents are included)
--> General page dedicated to
single-dish observations with out antennas (it also links
to useful tools for the pre- and post-observation phases).
