ECHO Echo echo

ECHO team members Mason Denny and Marc Leatham perform test on a scale model testbed
ECHO team members Mason Denny and Marc Leatham perform tests on a scale model testbed

This semester I start work in earnest on a new project thats been simmering in the background, the External Calibrator for Hydrogen Observatories (ECHO) an experimental method to provide an airborne calibration source for wide-field radio arrays observing Hydrogen at cosmological distances. In particular, accurate maps of the primary beam (the response of the receiver dipoles as a function of position on the sky) have been found to be crucial at multiple stages analysis of data from PAPER/MWA/LOFAR etc but have historically been measured through indirect means such as the amplitude of satellites or radio galaxies passing overhead. ECHO aims to provide a direct measurement with a system where all parameters are under the experimenter’s control.

At this point we are designing and building our transmitter (don’t need much power for a radio telescope!) and selecting a new drone platform. We’ve hired a small team of undergraduates to take point.

ECHO team members Marc Leatham and Victoria Serrano give the quad-rotor a shakedown flight. The quad is acting as a scale model and training frame for a larger platform soon to come.
ECHO team members Marc Leatham and Victoria Serrano give the quad-rotor a shakedown flight. The quad is acting as a scale model and training frame for a larger platform soon to come.
ECHO Version 1 A bicolog 5007 mounted on a Mikrokopter 8.
ECHO Version 1 A bicolog 5007 mounted on a 8 rotor Mikrokopter. An upgrade to a newer pixhawk-based platform is planned for the spring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This project is supported by National Science Foundation and the Bowman Low frequency Cosmology lab in the School for Earth and Space Exploration.

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