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GREAT - German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies

Principal Investigator: Dr. Rolf Güsten (Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Bonn)

During Basic Science, two bands, L#1 and L#2 will be operated simultaneously. The frequency ranges are, for L#1: 1.25--1.50 THz (240--200 µm) and for L#2: 1.82--1.92 THz (164.84--156.25 µm). The frequencies can be independently set in each band. Both bands have instantaneous bandwidths of 720 MHz.

Each receiver has two backends -- an Acousto-Optical Spectrometer with 4 GHz bandwidth and 1 MHz resolution, and a Chirp-Transform Spectrometer with 220 MHz bandwidth and 47 kHz resolution. These backends record data simultaneously.

For Basic Science, there are three supported observing strategies, (i) position switching, (ii) beam switching, and (iii) on-the-fly mapping in either position or beam switching mode.

Instrument sensitivities and recipes for calculating exposure times will be described in the "Guide to Observation Planning with GREAT", a document that will be released along with the final Call for Proposals.

A more detailed description of GREAT, and the GREAT team can be found on the instrument web page.

Page Last Updated: March 15, 2010