Seventy years of radio telescope design and construction

Abstract

Radio radiation from the Milky Way was serendipitously discovered by Jansky in 1932. Reber used a home-built parabolic reflector to map the “radio sky” around 1940. Radio astronomy quickly developed after 1945, and the first large reflectors appeared in 1956-1961, operating at wavelengths of 20 cm and longer. A trend to shorter wavelengths and larger reflectors pushed structural design to include precision in addition to stiffness. A breakthrough was achieved in the mid-sixties by the concept of homologous deformation, and the use of advanced finite-element-analysis programs. The largest fully steerable radio reflectors of 100 m diameter can be used to a wavelength of less than 1 cm, while the most-precise reflectors of 10 m to 15 m diameter operate at 0.3 mm (1 THz).