TK and QMC Instruments has been privileged to supply - over the last decade - many of the
receiver components used by the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration to generate the first
image at 1.3mm (230 GHz) of the supermassive black hole in Messier 87.
(Image from EHT)
The Event Horizon Telescope is make up of many mm-wave telescopes and arrays of
telecopes to provide the long baseline (the size of the Earth) to give the necessary angular
resolution to resolve the area around the Black Hole.
(Credit European Southern Observatory for the map)
For the Hawaii-based Submillimeter Array (SMA) of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard
& Smithsonian and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Taiwan,
we provided the integrated corrugated horns/SIS mixer blocks which define the beam
that each telescope sees, and holds the cryogenically cooled superconducting
detecting elements:
Electroformed Corrugated horns and SIS blocks
as well as large polarizing wire grids and cold teflon lenses to control the
incoming beam
For the ALMA Array, we provided both the radiometric Calibration Targets
ALMA Calibration Target
and the Band 6 Anti-Reflection (AR) Coated vacuum windows as well as supplying
parts to both the JCMT and to IRAM telecopes.