CCD-world: Re: Influence of meteorological radar system on CCD electronics

[Tony Distasio]

The following was posted to CCD-world:

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Weather Bureau (USA)
decided to install a series of high-power Doppler weather radar stations
here in the state of Hawaii. This was especially useful to them, because
Hawaii is an island state with large ocean channels between the islands.

Because we have two major astronomical centers here, (Mauna Kea and
Haleakala) on the Big Island and Maui, respectively, the Univ. of Hawaii
and the Institute for Astronomy put a lot of effort into minimizing any
possible harmful effects of this radar.  The federal organizations put
up a fight to force their installations to proceed, but the UH-IfA also
put up a serious effort to oppose and finally to modify the installation
of the radars.  Pressure was applied from the scientific level and the
political arenas.

In the end, after many meetings and considerable effort, the federal
agencies finally agreed to modify their software and control equipment,
at great expense to their project (!) and incorporated a method of
"spot blanking" whereby the radar beam is interrupted during that portion
of the sweep which would project it towards our respective observatories.
Thus, the beam is blanked (or off) during that small arc, and the
observatories on both islands are spared the unwanted irradiation! The
only time they cancel the spot blanking is during periods of severe
weather, when they need the coverage.  They inform us of this by FAX.
Because of the inclement weather, the observatories are usually not
observing during these times (well, optical observatories).

Perseverance paid off. Hope this helps you!

On Sat, 18 Sep 1999, Byeong-Gon Park wrote:

> Is there anybody who has information about the influence on
> CCD electronics by meteorological radar nearby?
> 
> The governmetal meteorological agency in my country is planning
> to setup a radar 500m to the west of our telescope.
> The freqency range will be 5.3 - 5.7 GHz and peak power is
> around 750KW with normal run at 110 - 570W.
> The direction of observation will be nearly horizontal,
> making 360 degree turn on rainy-cloudy days.
> 
> They say that they will do every precaution to make no harm
> to our observing system caused by this powerful EM wave
> source. But I wonder whether this is really harmful or not,
> especially to our CCD electronics.
(SNIP)
 
> Thanks,
> Byeong-Gon
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