Speakers
Description
The IRAM 30-meter telescope is a top-class single-dish millimetre facility. It has been running around the clock for around forty years. Since 2021, we have been started an ambitious process of upgrade of the telescope, aiming at keeping our telescope as a reference in its niche. Recently finished upgrades include a new, state-of-the-art servo control system that is allowing us to open new avenues as a high-performance mapping machine; also, we have improved the main dish surface by replacing the paint cover: this has yield in a huge improvement of the performance in day time, while keeping the optical quality in night time.
Currently on-going upgrades include: the replacement of obsolete VME equipment, the improvement and rationalisation of the time-distribution system and the automation of the VLBI configuration functionality (see presentation from P. Torné). In the immediate future, a thorough revision and upgrade of our thermal control system will be carried out. and providing the operation with enhanced monitoring capabilities.
Our monitoring capabilities have been greatly enhanced: now we can monitor a much larger amount of telescope parameters; user-friendly, Grafana-based interfaces are now used, in line with other modern observatories.
At a longer-term, new instruments are being planned. In particular, the future ALHAMBRA multi-beam millimetre receiver will hugely boost our mapping capabilities, specially in combination with the high-speed tracking capabilities.