First North Spur Fringes and Image!

Yesterday, Tuesday August 13, the ATCA reconfigured to the H75 array. This array uses two antennas on the north spur, as well as the new station at the intersection of the spur and east-west track.

The reconfiguration was successful, and at 5:28pm we received our first clean fringes from the north spur stations. Subsequent to this, the array was successfully recalibrated, and produced its first image using the H75 configuration. Scheduled astronomy will start tomorrow evening.

As well as the first time the north spur stations have taken astronomical signals, this is also the first time the return data paths from all antennas have used the new distribution system (single mode fibres).

This is a significant milestone in the MNRF-1 program!

Congratulations to all those that have played a part in the north spur, all the way from design years ago through to the inevitable fault finding at the new station posts yesterday.

Added by Andrew Wright on 2002-08-13