Estimation of Pointing Errors of Large Radio Telescopes under Solar Radiation Based on Digital Twin

The pointing accuracy of large radio telescopes is affected by antenna structure errors, installation errors, servo errors, gravity, and varying environmental factors. Although an on-line pointing model had been developed in the past for several large radio telescopes to correct these effects, it is also valuable to explore new ways to correct these effects. Therefore, in order to estimate the dynamic pointing error of large radio telescopes under solar radiation, a new way based on digital twin (DT) is used in this paper. Digital models of the Wuqing 70-m radio telescope (WRT70) are created based on the DT operational framework. Finally, the reliability of the WRT70’s DT system is verified, and the dynamic pointing error of WRT70 (staying at the position of the elevation angle of 90° and the azimuth angle of 180°) on two sunny days in different seasons is estimated by the created DT system. The research results show that the pointing error of large radio telescopes under solar radiation fluctuates greatly and the seasonal differences are very striking. The maximum elevation pointing error of WRT70 under solar radiation around the winter solstice is over 40 arcsec, which is equal to 4/11 of the beam width for WRT70 operating at 8 GHz. In this paper, it is feasible to estimate the time-varying pointing errors of large radio telescopes at rest under solar radiation by constructing a DT system, but it is not effective to estimate the dynamic pointing errors of large radio telescopes in operation. It is expected to establish a dynamic pointing error model and calibrate the dynamic pointing errors of large radio telescopes in operation by DT technology in the future.