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Pointing
20050930 report

Pointing & Focus checks for September 2005


Pointing
The plots below show the pointing data for, respectively, RxA & RxB:

Click for better view(s)

For RxA, there seems to be a trend of the azimuth residual with either azimuth (upper left panel; also seen last month) or elevation (upper-centre). While the former is not a trend that can be removed by adjusting the model parameters an analysis was performed using FIT9 in which all 7 model parameters were allowed to change optimally:

Click for better view(s)

There is a little improvement in the residual rms's, from (1.9",3.1") to (1.6",2.9"), and I was tempted to install the new TPOINT model derived from these data, but a logging problem causes multiple entries in the pointing logs that currently prevents TPOINT analyses. The process can hopefully be applied to next month's data without much loss of performance in the interim.

Thermal - i.e. analyses of the elevation residuals as functions of Receiver and antenna leg temperatures:

The plots above show no obvious systematics of the pointing residuals with temperature (i.e. time of day - upper-right and centre-right plots in each case), but formally:

  FE  No.of data   fit                              Temp range
  --  ----------  ----------------------------     -----------
   A     220      del = (+1.23 +- 0.66)*T_diff     -0.7 to +1.1
                      = (-0.31 +- 0.09)*T_mean       4  to  13

   B     164      del = (+0.42 +- 0.81)*T_diff     -0.7 to +0.7
                      = (-0.35 +- 0.14)*T_mean(**)   4  to  10

There's the merest whiff of significance in one of the T_mean plots but it's barely at the 3-sigma level: insufficient evidence to change any of the thermal parameters.

Focus

      FE  axis  No.obs.    mean   s.d.  Notes ('significant' trends)
                           (mm)   (mm)
    ----- ----  -------  ------- ------ -----------------------------
     RxA    Z      78     +0.05   0.07   1   
            X      46     +0.08   0.22  
            Y      46     -0.01   0.16

     RxB    Z      59     +0.11   0.07
            X      28     +0.18   0.22   
            Y      27     +0.02   0.09

                                                       T-range
    Note : 1 : Z_RxA = (+0.013 +- 0.003)*T_leg         4 to 13

No cause here for concern, or adjustment.

Contact: Iain Coulson. Updated: Mon Oct 3 14:00:26 HST 2005

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