The 14m telescope

The 14m telescope is a fully steerable antenna with an Azimuth/Elevation mount. It is also prime focus. This telescope was built by the Physics Department exclusively for timing of the Vela Pulsar (PSR0833-45).

History

The 14m antenna was built in 1981 as an equatorial mount parabolic dish and located at the Llanherne Observatory. With the establishment of the Mount Pleasant Observatory, the 14m was moved to Mt Pleasant in 1988 and the mount changed to the current Az/El (to improve sky coverage).

As the telescope has been used (almost) exclusively for timing of Vela, the department has a near daily archive of pulse arrival times since 1981.

Hardware

The 14m is equipped with three receiver (635 MHz, 954 MHz and 1391 MHz). These receivers, which operate concurrently, are dual polarisation and are uncooled. The dish is made of wire mesh rather than solid panels since it has been designed to only operate at frequencies below 3 GHz. The entire system is automated and averages the data at each frequency into two minute blocks to achieve a two minute time resolution.

A new system was added in early 1993 to improve to system at 950 MHz. A hardware and software system has been developed to allow the bandwidth at 950 MHz to be increased by a factor of eight. This means the timing resolution can be increased. The data from this new system is also saved in an un-averaged form so that it can be averaged (or folded) for any arbitrary time if a glitch occurs.