FIRST TESTS OF A TRUNCATED ICOSAHEDRAL GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE ANTENNA

We constructed a prototype of a spherical gravitational wave antenna i n the shape of a truncated icosahedron. We used it to test several asp ects of the practicality of a spherical multimode antenna. We successf ully tested a first-order direction finding algorithm, which uses fixe d linear combinations of six motion sensor responses to infer the rela tive amplitudes of the quadrupole modes and then the location of a tes t impulse. This method is immediately applicable to the determination Of the direction of a gravitation wave.