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7th of January 2016
ATCA millimeter receivers
In 2001 CSIRO and U.S. telecommunications giant TRW formed a strategic alliance to develop high-performance gallium arsenide and indium phosphide components for radio astronomy, advanced millimetre-wave sensors and telecommunications systems. New Indium phosphide (InP) low-noise amplifiers and digital receiver chips, designed by CSIRO engineers and fabricated by Velocium, led to the development of MMICs, monolithic microwave integrated circuits, allowing the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) to observe up to a frequency of 105 GHz. - The photo to the left (credit: CSIRO) shows one cooled millimetre receiver system with the 3-mm and 12-mm horns visible at the top. On the right is an overlay of the Centaurus A galaxy (image by David Malin) and an ATCA spectrum indicating HCO+ molecules moving rapidly around the galaxy's central black hole (image credit: B. S. Koribalski).


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