A 10 TO 20 YEAR PROJECTION As technology improves, so does the sensitivity obtainable in radio astronomy. It is, therefore, of interest to try to forecast the sensitivities that might be available in 1985-1995. Table III is an attempt to do this for continuum observations and Table IV for the spectral line observations. The differences between these two future tables and today's values are caused by the anticipated improvements in the receiver noise temperature. It is simply assumed that a noise temperature of 10 K will be obtained in the late nineteen eighties at all frequencies below 300 GHz. Thus, the receiver noise becomes an insignificant part of most radio astronomy observations, and the sensitivity is limited by unavoidable external noise T„, which is caused by galactic, magnetospheric, atmospheric and Earth radiation. It follows that further significant improvements in system noise become unlikely, if not impossible, for Earthbound radio astronomy observations.
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