The Qitai radio telescope

This study presents a general outline of the Qitai radio telescope(QTT) project.Qitai,the site of the telescope,is a county of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China,located in the east Tianshan Mountains at an elevation of about 1800 m.The QTT is a fully steerable,Gregorian-type telescope with a standard parabolic main reflector of 110 m diameter.The QTT has adopted an umbrella support,homology-symmetric lightweight design.The main reflector is active so that the deformation caused by gravit...     

Comets at radio wavelengths

Comets are considered as the most primitive objects in the Solar System. Their composition provides information on the composition of the primitive solar nebula, 4.6 Gyr ago. The radio domain is a privileged tool to study the composition of cometary ices. Observations of the OH radical at 18 cm wavelength allow us to measure the water production rate. A wealth of molecules (and some of their isotopologues) coming from the sublimation of ices in the nucleus have been identified by observations in the millimetre and submillimetre domains. We present an historical review on radio observations of comets, focusing on the results from our group, and including recent observations with the Nançay radio telescope, the IRAM antennas, the Odin satellite, the Herschel space observatory, ALMA, and the MIRO instrument aboard the Rosetta space probe.     

Astronomy at radio frequencies

The radio astronomer requires a specialized combination of aerial and receiver to be able to detect, measure and map extra-terrestrial signals. The following article presents a brief account of the basic techniques employed.     

Calibration of the solar radio spectrometer

This paper shows some improvements and new results of calibration of Chinese solar radio spectrometer by analyzing the daily calibration data recorded in the period of 1997–2007. First, the calibration coefficient is fitted for three bands (1.0–2.0 GHz, 2.6–3.8 GHz, 5.2–7.6 GHz) of the spectrometer by using the moving-average method confined by the property of the daily calibration data. By this calibration coefficient, the standard deviation of the calibration result was less than 10 sfu for 95% frequencies of 2.6–3.8 GHz band in 2003. This result is better than that calibrated with the constant coefficient. Second, the calibration coefficient is found in good correlation with local air temperature for most frequencies of 2.6–3.8 GHz band. Moreover, these results are helpful in the research of the quiet solar radio emission.     

The physics of extragalactic radio sources

The physical processes which are currently thought to give rise to the observed characteristics of these objects are reviewed. The large-scale structure clearly demands a need for an in situ resupply of energy to the relativistic particle population, and in addition strongly suggests that the large-scale flow is non-relativistic. Examination of the data for compact sources indicates that relativistic motion may explain the observations, but that severe difficulties arise when such flows are coupled to the large-scale structure. Finally, various aspects of the poorly understood nuclear engine are reviewed.     

The physics of fast radio bursts

In 2007, a very bright radio pulse was identified in the archival data of the Parkes Telescope in Australia, marking the beginning of a new research branch in astrophysics. In 2013, this kind of millisecond bursts with extremely high brightness temperature takes a unified name, fast radio burst(FRB). Over the first few years, FRBs seemed very mysterious because the sample of known events was limited. With the improvement of instruments over the last five years, hundreds of new FRBs have been discovered.The field is now undergoing a revolution and understanding of FRB has rapidly increased as new observational data increasingly accumulate. In this review, we will summarize the basic physics of FRBs and discuss the current research progress in this area.We have tried to cover a wide range of FRB topics, including the observational property, propagation effect, population study,radiation mechanism, source model, and application in cosmology. A framework based on the latest observational facts is now under construction. In the near future, this exciting field is expected to make significant breakthroughs.