An article dedicated to the technical commissioning and first light of the Sardinia Radio Telescope has been published in the latest issue (vol. 04, December 2015) of the prestigious Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation by World Scientific Publishing.
The article (available at http://www.worldscientific.com/toc/jai/04/03n04), to which nearly forty authors, including INAF technicians and technologists, contributed, describes the work carried out on SRT from June 2012 to October 2013.
During this phase, the radio telescope, built by the German company MT Mechatronics, was integrated with the electronic instrumentation and sensors developed internally at INAF. Thus, SRT transformed from a massive mechanical structure 70 meters high and weighing 3000 tons into a highly advanced system capable of observing faint signals from the most remote regions of the Universe up to over 100 GHz.
The commissioning of SRT was conducted with three radio astronomical receivers operating between 300 MHz and 26 GHz connected to a total-power type back-end. There was also the opportunity to test the active optics installed in the primary mirror of SRT. The experimental activities conducted by the technical team showed performances in line with the expected project specifications.
After the closure of the scientific validation phase (although some points remain to be completed), SRT is now available to the astronomical community and is currently engaged in its first real period of scientific observations, the Early Science Program (ESP).