EMIR (Eight MIxer Receiver)
Call for Proposals
Overview
The new receiver EMIR (Fig.1) is scheduled for installation and commissioning at the 30m telescope in March through April 2009. EMIR will replace the current single pixel heterodyne receivers A/B100, C/D150, A/B230, and C/D270. HERA, the bolometers, and the backends are unchanged. EMIR will provide a minimum instantaneous and width of 4 GHz in each of the two orthogonal linear polarizations for the 3, 2, 1.3 and 0.9mm atmospheric windows (Fig.2). In addition to the vast increase in bandwidth, the receiver is expected to offer considerably improved noise performance, a stable alignment between bands, and other practical advantages.
The four EMIR bands are designated as E090, E150, E230, and E330 according to their approximate center frequencies in GHz. While the E150 and E230 bands have SSB mixers with a single sideband available at a time, the E090 and E330 bands can be operated in 2SB mode where both sidebands are available for connection to backends. Furthermore, the E090 band is built in a technology that offers 8 GHz instantaneous bandwidth per sideband and polarization. Both polarizations of a given band will always be tuned to the same frequency as they share a single common local oscillator. The tuning ranges of the 4 bands, the typical receiver noise temperatures, and other parameters are listed in Tab.1.
EMIR will for the first time in the history of the 30m telescope provide a permanently available high sensitivity E330 band, opening this atmospheric window for regular use under good weather conditions. As commissioning of this channel will be difficult and time consuming during the summer semester, only a maximum of total 20 hours observing time will be available for regular proposals for this semester. The proposed targets should ideally be point--like and available during nighttime in fall. The observations will be made as service observing with shared risk.
Selection of EMIR bands
Connection to backends
Calibration issues
Velocity scales
Update of PaKo
Observations time estimator
Details
Losses of dichroics
Settings of the IF switch box
Velocity scales
Results of Commissioning
TBD