| 25th of January 2024 |
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| Long Baseline Array observing session |
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The angular resolution of a telescope improves with the diameter of
the dish, or with the spacing between elements of the array. The
technique of Very Long Baseline Interferometry uses antennas spaced
hundreds to thousands of kilometres apart to achieve angular resolutions measured
in milli-arcseconds. The ATNF telescopes work together with those from
the University of Tasmania, the South
African Radio Astronomy Observatory, and SpaceOps New Zealand
to form the Long Baseline Array. A five-day LBA session
wrapped up yesterday, with the projects scheduled being
"Characterizing the corona of AB Doradus",
"VLBI Astrometry of Radio Stars to Link Radio and Optical Celestial Reference Frames: Southern Sky",
"Physics of Gamma Ray Emitting Active Galactic Nuclei", and
"Zooming in on a white dwarf around a reignited star".
Data is correlated using the DiFX software correlator at the
Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre in Perth.
The image above shows Murriyang, the Parkes 64m radio-telescope,
as captured by
the
Parkes Observatory webcam,
during the run, showing that clear skies generally prevailed this session!
As January 26th is a public holiday in Australia, the next ADAP will be Monday January 29th. |