Technical Details of the KOSMA telescope

KOSMA

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Technical Details of the KOSMA telescope (2000)

	----------------------
	For KOSMA observing cookbook, click here.
	For Efficiencies and Beam widths, click here.
	For the original KOSMA site weather statistics, see here.
	For RX230 receiver tuning table, see here.
	For pointing, see here (in German).
	For calibration, see here (in German).
	----------------------

Site (Gornergrat near Zermatt of Switzerland)

Longitude         : 8 deg East
Latitude          : 47 deg North
Elevation         : 3135 m above sea level

Telescope

Type              : Cassegrain
f-ratio           : 10.4
Focal length      : 31.2 m
Mount             : altitude-azimuth
Observing ports   : 2 Nasmyth foci
Max. slew rate    : 1 Degree/s
Elevation limits : 0-90 Degree
Pointing accuracy : 10"

Primary reflector parameters

Diameter          : 3m
Shape            : parabolic
f-ratio           : 0.43
Construction      : 18 aluminum panels, backstructure CFRP framework
Surface accuracy : 5 micron rms (each panel) 20-30 micron rms (telescope)
Alignment         : actuator at each panel corner

Secondary reflector parameters

Diameter          : 27 cm
Shape             : hyperbolic
Surface           : 4 micron rms
Construction      : aluminum
Alignment         : 3 linear and 2 angular degrees of freedom with a hexapod
Chopper           : wobble mechanism in cross-elevation, larger than +-3 arcmin on sky, 4 Hz max.

Receiver

Dual-channel-SIS receiver

Summer Configuration : 230 GHz/345 GHz
Winter Configuration : 345 GHz/660 GHz

Tuning ranges Receiver Noise Temperature (DSB)
[GHz] [K]

    210 - 270                   150
    330 - 365                   100
    436 - 495                   90 - 120
    630 - 690                   210
    780 - 820                   800 - 1100

All receivers have an IF of 1.4 GHz with a bandwidth of 1 GHz

Spectrometer

LRS = Low Resolution Acousto-optical Spectrometer
MRS = Medium Resolution Acousto-optical Spectrometer
HRS = High Resolution Acousto-optical Spectrometer
VRS = Variable Resolution Acousto-optical Spectrometer

   Channels Bandwidth Channel Spacing Reception   Resolution
                                           Bandwidth   Bandwidth
                 [MHz]        [kHz]        [kHz]       [kHz]

LRS   1450      1000          688           1800        1150
MRS   1800       300          167            560         360
HRS   2048        59           29             79          53
VRS max. 2048 655-1100    320-700       800-1600    550-1100

KOSMA Observing Schedule

References with information about the Observatory

The University of Cologne 3-m radio telescope. Winnewisser et al. 1986,Astronomy and Astrophysics 167, 207
CO submillimeter observations from Gornergrat. Winnewisser et al. 1990, Astronomy and Astrophysics 230, 248
The new KOSMA 3m Telescope. Kramer et al. 1998, In: Proc. SPIE Vol. 3357
Surveys with the new KOSMA telescope. Kramer et al. 1999, In: "Imaging at Radio through Submillimeter Wavelengths", J. Mangum (ed.), PASP, Tucson/Arizona

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