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I like to preach that the stuff we work on is just guitar amps, not lab gear or NASA space probes. That means nothing needs to be very precise, just in the ballpark. So in the most recent National Geographic magazine, there is an article about a large array of radio telescopes built up in the Atacama desert high in the Andes mountains of Chile. The ALMA - Atacama Large Millimeter Array - is at 16,400 feet altitude.
The ALMA is a whole passel of these huge dish antennas, all working together. Like dozens of them, 66 of them. Most are 39 feet across.
Here: Home
Now any one of these scopes is a powerful sensor, but when they work together, it increases their overall effectiveness. So if we spread them out a mile apart, it is like we have a mile wide telescope. So they have 66 of these things, each with its own receivers and ampliiers and proccessing gear, but they have to work together. The measurements and imagine is ULTRA precise, so much so that there is a supercomputer there to correlate all the feeds. It not only has to compensate for the differing lengths of cable from each antenna back to the central facility, it even has to compensate for the change in cable length from thermal expansion as the temperature changes.
Now THAT is precision.
This is like a PA system with dispersed speakers, and we have to put delay on the rear speakers so the time it takes for sound to travel from the front speakers is compensated for.
The ALMA is a whole passel of these huge dish antennas, all working together. Like dozens of them, 66 of them. Most are 39 feet across.
Here: Home
Now any one of these scopes is a powerful sensor, but when they work together, it increases their overall effectiveness. So if we spread them out a mile apart, it is like we have a mile wide telescope. So they have 66 of these things, each with its own receivers and ampliiers and proccessing gear, but they have to work together. The measurements and imagine is ULTRA precise, so much so that there is a supercomputer there to correlate all the feeds. It not only has to compensate for the differing lengths of cable from each antenna back to the central facility, it even has to compensate for the change in cable length from thermal expansion as the temperature changes.
Now THAT is precision.
This is like a PA system with dispersed speakers, and we have to put delay on the rear speakers so the time it takes for sound to travel from the front speakers is compensated for.
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