Inversion of Fan-Beam Scans in Radio Astronomy

Abstract

A classical problem of data reduction in radio astronomy is how to reconstruct a two-dimensional brightness distribution over a source from fan-beam scans taken in various position angles. The integral equation underlying the problem arises also in interferometry and in the reduction of data from occultations. A new solution to the integral equation for the case of infinitely narrow fan beams has been obtained, which makes use of numerical operations on the observational data in the sky plane and does not require the computation of Fourier transforms.