Asia Pacific Telescope - APT

The VLBI network in Australia is also a key component of the Asia Pacific Telescope (APT), which includes most radio telescopes in the Asia Pacific region, primarily in Japan and China. Information on the APT, including telesope and receiver details are available via WWW on http://wwwatnf.atnf.csiro.au/apt/, via anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp.atnf.csiro.au/pub/apt/ or via email from apt@atnf.csiro.au.

At the APT95 Workshop (Sydney, December 1995), the APT observatory directors decided to allocate 6 days in 1996 to coordinated APT observations. These will consist of:

• 2-day astronomy observations at low frequency (L-band?), to be recorded in (or translated to) S-2 format and to be correlated at the LBA S-2 correlator in Australia.
• 2-day astrometry/geodesy observations at S/X, in MkIII format, to be correlated at USNO.
• 2-day 22 GHz observations, in VSOP (K4) format, to be correlated at the Mitaka correlator in Japan.

Proposals for these observations will be accepted by any of the regional networks comprising the APT (e.g. ATNF, JNET, China), as part of each network's normal proposing cycle. The ATNF LBA proposal forms have been ammended to allow application for APT time. Additional scientific justification is essential.