We describe the results of test observations obtained with a 5-m single-dish radiotelescope (RT5) using novel planar feeds designed to detect circularly polarized emission in the 1.5 -3.9 GHz band. The beam of such feeds is wide; nevertheless, solar scans have been successfully done using feeds at the focus of the primary mirror of the RT5. The sensitivity is about 1 sfu at each polarization and about 1.4 sfu at the I Stokes parameter. We estimate that it is possible to detect flares with fluxes above 5 sfu at the I Stokes parameter.

We developed a mid infrared (MIR) solar telescope, centered at 10 µm. Various optical layouts were analyzed based on computer simulations and a RitcheyChretien 6-inches telescope was selected with a plate scale of 2.5′′/mm using a pyroelectric 4 × 16 pixels detector. The angular resolution is 36′′/pixel with a field of view of 9.6′×2.4′. Two germanium filters are used, one at the aperture of thetelescope and another near its focal plane. The detector was characterized with alaboratory black-body. The count values follow a linear relation with the blackbody temperature. The control systems for both the telescope and the detectorwere developed. Proper mechanical supports were designed for the filters, detectorand electronics. The system has been integrated and a user interface was developed. Preliminary observations have been made giving a signal-to-noise ratio of ≈ 1000.

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