EMAIL: d96rfr@csd.uu.se
NAME: Robert Fremin
TOPIC: Great engineering achievements
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Socorro radiotelescope
COUNTRY: Sweden
WEBPAGE: http://www.csd.uu.se/~d96rfr/
RENDERER USED: PovRay 3.02 Win32
TOOLS USED: No tools used in scene building. Everything written in PovRay
            internal editor. Image post-processing (conversion & added text)
            and ground heightfield drawing, using Paint Shop Pro 4.12.
RENDER TIME: ?h ?m with 800x600 adaptive AA level3 mode 2
HARDWARE USED: Pentium Pro 200MHz

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
The radiotelescope is perhaps the most important equipment of modern
astronomers today. Because of this invention, the scientist have
discovered new theories as "the big bang" and such when they were able
to see further out in space (and therefore further back in time).
The principle is that all molecules send out radiowaves that the
antennas intercept, and is then visualized with computers.
  After a while, they discovered that many smaller antennas could be
synchronized to work as a huge single antenna. This technique is called
"aperture synthesis".
In the desert of New Mexico, USA, outside the town Socorro lies one
of the largest array of radiotelescopes in the world, called the VLA
(the Very Large Array).
The VLA consists of 27 antennas with a radius of about 25 meters.
They are oriented in a Y-shaped pattern. This gives the VLA a
total capacity equal to a 27 kilometer radius telescope!
Of course the aperture technique can be used in a larger concept
VLBI (Very Large Baseline Interferometry) where radioscopes all
around the world are synchronized in a gigantic pattern....


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

Written in PovRay for Win32.
The heightfield was brushed out in PSP.

I had one great photo of the angle used in my image, so I measured
and calculated, and got this out of it.

The antenna dish is a large CSG of spheres and planes, and with a
corrugated outside with a story of it's own (see below). The framework
around the antenna is hard vector and cylinder work. I duplicated and
rotated one section of frame all around the antenna. The box is a set
of triangle handmade faces. It took a while until I understood how all
parts looked and fit together, for instance the bottom tripod used to
be a quadpod until I found out the facts... :)
  The corrugations took a lot of time to make. First I used some spheres,
scaled and rotated. HOWEVER I GOT SOME BUG! :( The backside of the antenna
with corrugations got a large assymetric hole, where I could see through
into the dish! Hmm, as I knew that I needed the pattern on the outside,
I used cylinders instead. Same thing, large hole on the surface. So I
decreased the number of cylinders, and after a couple of tries the hole
disappeared (leaving me unhappy about the crude corrugation). :P
  The last weeks of February were used almost only for lighting and the
landscape, which I am not pleased with at all. In the photo, there is a
nice red morning glow over the picture, but when I tried to make the same,
the image lost it's details.

Sorry about that I didn't make the rails that the antennas should be
mounted to, but I had only a few photos, and could not see quite how
it should be made. (and I hadn't got the time)

As the three parts of the antenna is separate CSG's the whole construction
is prepared for animation sequences...

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