Study of a feed cluster for the Gregorian dual-reflector feed of the Arecibo radio telescope

It is shown that a hexagonal seven-element cluster of dual-mode horn antennas can be used in the Gregorian dual-reflector feed of the Arecibo telescope, to provide seven beams of sufficient quality at 1.42 GHz for many radio-astronomy purposes. Better performance is available at higher frequencies. The cluster feed study has been carried out using geometrical-optics ray tracing, i.e., the TRT code. The TRT results have been verified against physical-optics integration at 1 GHz.<
>