ALFA: Arecibo L-Band Feed Array

The Arecibo L-band Feed Array (ALFA) is a seven feed system that will allow large-scale surveys of the sky to be conducted with unprecedented sensitivity using the 305-m Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. The NAIC Arecibo Observatory telescope is the largest and most sensitive single dish radio telescope in the world and is used to study large numbers of sources that are too faint to be seen with other telescopes. In the past, use of the telescope as a survey instrument has been limited by the relatively small field of view in a single observation. ALFA, operating near 1.4 GHz, consists of a cluster of seven cooled dual-polarization feeds, a fiber-optical transmission system, and digital back-end signal processors. The system enables deep surveys for a variety of objects in the Milky Way Galaxy and of other galaxies for probing cosmology. As such, the multibeam system has a broad appeal to astronomers from all over the world.