Performance of the TRAO 13.7-m Telescope with New Systems

We report the performance of the 13.7-meter Taeduk Radio Astronomy Observatory (TRAO) radio telescope. The telescope has been equipped with a new receiver, SEQUOIA-TRAO, a new backend system, FFT2G, and a new VxWorks operating system. The receiver system features a 16-pixel focal plane array using high-performance MMIC preamplifiers; it shows very low system noise levels, with system noise temperatures from 150 K to 450 K at frequencies from 86 to 115 GHz. With the new backend system, we can simultaneously obtain 32 spectra, each with a velocity coverage of 163 km/s and a resolution of 0.04 km/s at 115 GHz. The new operating system, VxWorks, has successfully handled the LMTMC-TRAO observing software. The main observing method is the on-the-fly (OTF) mapping mode; a position-switching mode is available for small-area observations. Remote observing is provided. The antenna surface has been newly adjusted using digital photogrammetry, achieving a rms surface accuracy better than 130 μm. The pointing uncertainty is found to be less than 5" over the entire sky. We tested the new receiver system with multi-frequency observations in OTF mode. The aperture efficiencies are 43±1%, 42±1%, 37±1%, and 33±1%, the beam efficiencies are 45±2%, 48±2%, 46±2%, and 41±2% at 86,98, 110, and 115 GHz, respectively.