Status of the Sardinia Radio Telescope project

Abstract

We present the status of the Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT) project, a new general purpose, fully steerable 64 m diameter parabolic radiotelescope capable to operate with high efficiency in the 0.3-116 GHz frequency range. The instrument is the result of a scientific and technical collaboration among three Structures of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF): the Institute of Radio Astronomy of Bologna, the Cagliari Astronomy Observatory (in Sardinia,) and the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory in Florence. Funding agencies are the Italian Ministry of Education and Scientific Research, the Sardinia Regional Government, and the Italian Space Agency (ASI,) that has recently rejoined the project. The telescope site is about 35 km North of Cagliari. The radio telescope has a shaped Gregorian optical configuration with a 7.9 m diameter secondary mirror and supplementary Beam-WaveGuide (BWG) mirrors. With four possible focal positions (primary, Gregorian, and two BWGs), SRT will be able to allocate up to 20 remotely controllable receivers. One of the most advanced technical features of the SRT is the active surface: the primary mirror will be composed by 1008 panels supported by electromechanical actuators digitally controlled to compensate for gravitational deformations. With the completion of the foundation on spring 2006 the SRT project entered its final construction phase. This paper reports on the latest advances on the SRT project.