Aerial Smoothing in Radio Astronomy

Abstract

When an aerial is used to survey the distribution of radio brightness over the sky, the observed distribution is smoother than the true distribution; the broader the beam of the aerial, the greater the smoothing. It is shown that the aerial does not register those spatial Fourier components of the true distribution having frequencies beyond a cut-off determined by the aerial aperture. Components of lower frequency are registered but their relative strengths are altered.