We’re back testing the ECHO drone calibrator. This time at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory Long Wavelength Array. OVRO is about 5 hours north of LA. The location is spectacular with the back side of the Sierras rising steeply to the west. The goal of this testing is to get more experience integrating with an […]
Drone Testing at Owens Valley Read More »
Just announced today, HERA has received a boost of $5.8M from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. This comes on top of the most recent $9.5M grant from the National Science Foundation. The NSF support provided for a core of 250 dishes and enough infrastructure to record from them. Support from the Moore foundation allows
HERA awarded 5.8M from Moore Foundation Read More »
This weekend, in a burst of activity with lots of hard work by students from ASU and Embry Riddle, it almost looks like we have dish. We’ve added the primary support pipes and in a marathon session of angle grinding, cut all the mesh pieces. Next time we’ll be putting the rest of the supports and installing the mesh! Thanks
HERA Prescott – Starting to look like a dish! Read More »
Today progress on the Prescott HERA dish took the form of building the dish hub and rim. The hub is where all the dish supports (25′ pvc pipes) meet. The hub is made using concentric “sonotube” concrete forms in which are embedded 3″ plastic pipes set in a radial pattern. Its basically a giant tinker toy hub made of cement. At
HERA Prescott – Cement. lots of cement Read More »
Our first paper about the drone calibrator is out on the arxiv today! Using data from our field tests last year we measured the stability and accuracy of the beam maps. The repeatability compared well to measurements made using satellites (thats the plot on the right) and the measurements matched up well with the models. There were a few issues though.
When building any kind of instrument its really important for the people looking at the data to understand all the little things that go into building it and from an experimental perspective its key to be able to experiment with the hardware. With the primary construction going on in South Africa this is a challenge. Travel to site is key,
Last week the ECHO team took the (relatively) short drive from Tempe up to Prescott, Arizona and Embry Riddle Aeronautical University to do some more testing at a new location. The Embry-Riddle Physics department has put together a very nice campus observatory which is predominantly devoted to radio science, both astronomy and aerospace. Under the leadership of Professor Andri
First map of MWA tile! Read More »
Here’s some great news, the first stage of the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) has been finished and is now taking data. Now, witness the might of this fully operational battlestation. Well, actually we’re far from full size, so far we’ve got 19 out of the planned 350 dishes. Here’s a picture.Each dish is 14 meters (42ft) across.
First 19 HERA dishes activated in the Karoo. Read More »
This week several students and I traveled to Green Bank, WV for some high precision testing of the ECHO drone. The goal was to test our beam mapping accuracy on an antenna for which we had good models. This was also a week reserved for focused work; its our opportunity to put in a solid amount of time in the
ECHO testing in Green Bank: 2015 Read More »
This year the Murchison Widefield Array annual December meeting was hosted by Arizona State University, here in Tempe. In celebration of over a year of active observing the meeting was opened to attendance and contributions from the wider community. The result was a rare convocation of the low frequency radio astronomy community. Topics ranged from
Early Science from Low-frequency Radio Telescopes Read More »
