Telescope illumination and beam measurements for submillimeter astronomy

Submillimeter receivers which operate in the highest frequency atmospheric windows must still be mounted on large infrared and optical telescopes. Finding the optimum submillimeter wave illumination for these large telescopes is simplified by their effectively perfect optical surfaces and long focal lengths, but is complicated by telescope optics which have been optimized for non-tapered beams. In order to determine the effects of changing illumination edge taper, we calculated idealized aperture and beam efficiencies for telescopes which are used for submillimeter astronomical observations. The optimum illumination edge taper for the large infrared telescopes is near 10 dB, somewhat less than for classical radio telescopes, and is not very critical as long as it is between 10 and 13 dB.We also present an accurate method for measuring the sizes of, and deviations from, Gaussian beam pattern distributions by using astronomical sources which have sizes comparable with the beam.