Abstract
VARIATIONS of atmospheric radio refractive index can cause phase differences between signals received at spaced aerials and limit the resolution of large radio telescopes using the aperture synthesis technique1. Hinder2 found that anomalous phase differences recorded at the One-Mile telescope at Cambridge3 were caused by thermal updraughts and fair weather cumulus; the mean size of the irregularities was 700 m. Earlier calculations4 had shown that the gradients of refractive index across fronts were likely to be important but it was believed that corrections using ground-based measurements of pressure, temperature, and humidity could be applied to reduce errors from such large scale (≈ 500 km) weather systems5.
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HARDY, R. Meteorological features affecting large aperture synthesis radio telescopes. Nature 249, 431–433 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1038/249431b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/249431b0
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