When most people think of radio astronomy, they think of an individual dish antenna, such as the Parkes radio telescope seen in the movie The Dish. However, the radio astronomy world is abuzz with talk of huge projects involving hundreds of individual antennas combined together, with the billion dollar Square Kilometer Array as the ultimate example. Yet, single-dish telescopes have, and continue to, play a vital role in radio astronomy. This essay will compares the strengths of single-dish telescopes to interferometers and take a look at theresearch which is performed using these tools.
SingleDishTelescopes.pdf (151KB)