51. Interpretation of solar radio-frequency disk brightness distributions derived from observations with aerials extended in one dimension

Extract

Several recent papers have dealt with observations of brightness distributions over the solar disk, which were derived either from two-aerial interferometer observations at various spacings and orientations (e.g. O'Brien, 1953) [1], or from multiple-element interferometer fan-beam observations at various orientations (e.g. Christiansen and Warburton, 1954) [2], In each a two-dimensional distribution is derived from a number of essentially one-dimensional observations by a Fourier synthesis method described by O'Brien. The detail given by these methods must be limited by the finite resolution of the individual observations (limited by the maximum aperture of the aerial system), but the form of the limitation is not obvious, though its knowledge is required when relating the observations to a solar model.