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Antenna efficiency |
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| | K, the so-called "antenna efficiency", is a measure of what antenna temperature one gets out of a fiducial received astronomical source flux density. For the ATCA, K is of order 10-15 K/Jy, depending on the observing frequency. |
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| | This implies that we must optimise the conversion rate of incoming signal strength to outgoing power to the correlator. |
is called the antenna's "effective area". б
| | What we need to find out now is which minimal astronomical source power we can detect for a given noise power. If we want to detect an astronomical source, its power must be stronger than the noise power of our equipment (plus sky background). |
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| | But first: What does the "noise" consist of? |
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