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As part of an effort to quantify ASKAP’s RFI environment and monitor
changes during SKA construction, a first trial epoch was recently
carried out of SMART, the Survey and routine Monitoring of ASKAP’s
RFI environment and Trends. This survey records 20 minutes of
full-resolution data while tracking celestial coordinates chosen to
cross specific azimuth and elevation locations, covering a wide range
of angles on the sky. Each pointing in a given frequency band is
observed three times over the course of 24 hours with the goal being
to assess RFI at different times of the day. These observations will
be processed by software designed to gather RFI statistics from ASKAP
flagging tables and will augment the dedicated RFI monitoring systems
with more sensitive data from the telescope itself. The image above
shows the Locations in Az/El coordinates and times (colour coded by
time of day as concentric rings per observation) for the SMART
observations. The survey was designed to map a wide range of
directions across the full frequency range observable with
ASKAP. (Image credit: Vanessa Moss)
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