The Murchison Widefield Array: Design Overview
The Murchison Widefield Array is a dipole-based aperture array synthesis telescope designed to operate in the 80-300 MHz frequency range. It is capable of a wide range of science investigations but is initially focused on three key science projects: detection and characterization of three dimensiona...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
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IEEE
2009
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/46854 |
| _version_ | 1848757675427364864 |
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| author | Lonsdale, Colin Cappallo, Roger Morales, Miguel Briggs, Frank Benkevitch, Leonid Bowman, Judd Bunton, John Burns, Steven Corey, Brian DeSouza, Ludi Doeleman, Sheperd Derome, Mark Deshpande, Avinash Gopala, Modavanatt Greenhill, Lincoln Herne, David Hewitt, Jacqueline Kamini, P. Kasper, Justin Kincaid, Barton Kocz, Jonathon Kowald, Errol Kratzenberg, Eric Kumar, Deepak Lynch, Mervyn Madhavi, S. Matejek, Michael Mitchell, Daniel Morgan, Edward Oberoi, Divya Ord, Steven Pathikulangara, Joseph Prabu, T. Rogers, Alan Roshi, Anish Saleh, Joseph Sault, Robert Shankar, N. Udaya Srivani, K. Stevens, Jamie Tingay, Steven Vaccarella, Annino Waterson, Mark Wayth, Randall Webster, Rachel Whitney, Alan Williams, Andrew Williams, Christopher |
| author_facet | Lonsdale, Colin Cappallo, Roger Morales, Miguel Briggs, Frank Benkevitch, Leonid Bowman, Judd Bunton, John Burns, Steven Corey, Brian DeSouza, Ludi Doeleman, Sheperd Derome, Mark Deshpande, Avinash Gopala, Modavanatt Greenhill, Lincoln Herne, David Hewitt, Jacqueline Kamini, P. Kasper, Justin Kincaid, Barton Kocz, Jonathon Kowald, Errol Kratzenberg, Eric Kumar, Deepak Lynch, Mervyn Madhavi, S. Matejek, Michael Mitchell, Daniel Morgan, Edward Oberoi, Divya Ord, Steven Pathikulangara, Joseph Prabu, T. Rogers, Alan Roshi, Anish Saleh, Joseph Sault, Robert Shankar, N. Udaya Srivani, K. Stevens, Jamie Tingay, Steven Vaccarella, Annino Waterson, Mark Wayth, Randall Webster, Rachel Whitney, Alan Williams, Andrew Williams, Christopher |
| author_sort | Lonsdale, Colin |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | The Murchison Widefield Array is a dipole-based aperture array synthesis telescope designed to operate in the 80-300 MHz frequency range. It is capable of a wide range of science investigations but is initially focused on three key science projects: detection and characterization of three dimensional brightness temperature fluctuations in the 21 cmline of neutral hydrogen during the epoch of reionization (EoR) at red shifts from six to ten; solar imaging and remote sensing of the inner heliosphere via propagation effects on signals from distant background sources; and high-sensitivity exploration ofthe variable radio sky. The array design features 8192 dualpolarization broadband active dipoles, arranged into 512 Btiles, comprising 16 dipoles each. The tiles are quasi-randomly distributed over an aperture 1.5 km in diameter, with a small number of outliers extending to 3 km. All tile-tile baselines are correlated in custom field-programmable gate array based hardware, yielding a Nyquist-sampled instantaneous monochromaticuv coverage and unprecedented point spread function quality. The correlated data are calibrated in real time using novel position-dependent self-calibration algorithms. The array is located in the Murchison region of outback Western Australia. This region is characterized by extremely low population density and a superbly radio-quiet environment, allowing full exploitation of the instrumental capabilities. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T09:31:52Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-46854 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T09:31:52Z |
| publishDate | 2009 |
| publisher | IEEE |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-468542017-01-30T15:29:44Z The Murchison Widefield Array: Design Overview Lonsdale, Colin Cappallo, Roger Morales, Miguel Briggs, Frank Benkevitch, Leonid Bowman, Judd Bunton, John Burns, Steven Corey, Brian DeSouza, Ludi Doeleman, Sheperd Derome, Mark Deshpande, Avinash Gopala, Modavanatt Greenhill, Lincoln Herne, David Hewitt, Jacqueline Kamini, P. Kasper, Justin Kincaid, Barton Kocz, Jonathon Kowald, Errol Kratzenberg, Eric Kumar, Deepak Lynch, Mervyn Madhavi, S. Matejek, Michael Mitchell, Daniel Morgan, Edward Oberoi, Divya Ord, Steven Pathikulangara, Joseph Prabu, T. Rogers, Alan Roshi, Anish Saleh, Joseph Sault, Robert Shankar, N. Udaya Srivani, K. Stevens, Jamie Tingay, Steven Vaccarella, Annino Waterson, Mark Wayth, Randall Webster, Rachel Whitney, Alan Williams, Andrew Williams, Christopher ionosphere Antenna array calibration imaging astronomy The Murchison Widefield Array is a dipole-based aperture array synthesis telescope designed to operate in the 80-300 MHz frequency range. It is capable of a wide range of science investigations but is initially focused on three key science projects: detection and characterization of three dimensional brightness temperature fluctuations in the 21 cmline of neutral hydrogen during the epoch of reionization (EoR) at red shifts from six to ten; solar imaging and remote sensing of the inner heliosphere via propagation effects on signals from distant background sources; and high-sensitivity exploration ofthe variable radio sky. The array design features 8192 dualpolarization broadband active dipoles, arranged into 512 Btiles, comprising 16 dipoles each. The tiles are quasi-randomly distributed over an aperture 1.5 km in diameter, with a small number of outliers extending to 3 km. All tile-tile baselines are correlated in custom field-programmable gate array based hardware, yielding a Nyquist-sampled instantaneous monochromaticuv coverage and unprecedented point spread function quality. The correlated data are calibrated in real time using novel position-dependent self-calibration algorithms. The array is located in the Murchison region of outback Western Australia. This region is characterized by extremely low population density and a superbly radio-quiet environment, allowing full exploitation of the instrumental capabilities. 2009 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/46854 IEEE fulltext |
| spellingShingle | ionosphere Antenna array calibration imaging astronomy Lonsdale, Colin Cappallo, Roger Morales, Miguel Briggs, Frank Benkevitch, Leonid Bowman, Judd Bunton, John Burns, Steven Corey, Brian DeSouza, Ludi Doeleman, Sheperd Derome, Mark Deshpande, Avinash Gopala, Modavanatt Greenhill, Lincoln Herne, David Hewitt, Jacqueline Kamini, P. Kasper, Justin Kincaid, Barton Kocz, Jonathon Kowald, Errol Kratzenberg, Eric Kumar, Deepak Lynch, Mervyn Madhavi, S. Matejek, Michael Mitchell, Daniel Morgan, Edward Oberoi, Divya Ord, Steven Pathikulangara, Joseph Prabu, T. Rogers, Alan Roshi, Anish Saleh, Joseph Sault, Robert Shankar, N. Udaya Srivani, K. Stevens, Jamie Tingay, Steven Vaccarella, Annino Waterson, Mark Wayth, Randall Webster, Rachel Whitney, Alan Williams, Andrew Williams, Christopher The Murchison Widefield Array: Design Overview |
| title | The Murchison Widefield Array: Design Overview |
| title_full | The Murchison Widefield Array: Design Overview |
| title_fullStr | The Murchison Widefield Array: Design Overview |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Murchison Widefield Array: Design Overview |
| title_short | The Murchison Widefield Array: Design Overview |
| title_sort | murchison widefield array: design overview |
| topic | ionosphere Antenna array calibration imaging astronomy |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/46854 |