NGAT: The Next Generation Arecibo Telescope

The Arecibo Observatory (AO) scientific and engineering staff and the AO user community have proposed a new telescope concept, referred to as the ‘Next Generation Arecibo Telescope’ (NGAT) [1] . The proposal is for an array of dishes to be ‘tightly’ packed on a tiltable platform, on a single plane. This configuration was envisaged to obtain maximum surface brightness sensitivity. The design satisfies the following key science requirements: (a) 5 MW of continuous-wave transmitting power at 2 - 6 GHz, 1-2 arcmin beamwidth at these frequencies, and increased sky coverage for planetary defense; (b) 0° to 45° or more sky coverage from zenith to observe both parallel and perpendicular directions to the geomagnetic field, 10 MW peak transmitting power at 430 MHz (also at 220 MHz under consideration) and very high surface brightness sensitivity for incoherent scattering experiments and (c) excellent sensitivity over 200 MHz to 30 GHz frequency range and increased sky coverage and telescope pointing up to 48° from zenith to observe the Galactic Center for astronomical research.