Reconsidering the advantages of the three-dimensional representation of the interferometric transform for imaging with non-coplanar baselines and wide fields of view

© 2017 ESO. Radio telescopes with baselines that span thousands of kilometres and with fields of view that span tens of degrees have been recently deployed, such as the Low Frequency Array, and are currently being developed, such as the Square Kilometre Array. Additionally, there are proposals for s...

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Main Authors: Smith, D., Young, A., Davidson, David
Format: Journal Article
Published: EDP Sciences 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/72839
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author Smith, D.
Young, A.
Davidson, David
author_facet Smith, D.
Young, A.
Davidson, David
author_sort Smith, D.
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description © 2017 ESO. Radio telescopes with baselines that span thousands of kilometres and with fields of view that span tens of degrees have been recently deployed, such as the Low Frequency Array, and are currently being developed, such as the Square Kilometre Array. Additionally, there are proposals for space-based instruments with all-sky imaging capabilities, such as the Orbiting Low Frequency Array. Such telescopes produce observations with three-dimensional visibility distributions and curved image domains. In most work to date, the visibility distribution has been converted to a planar form to compute the brightness map using a two-dimensional Fourier transform. The celestial sphere is faceted in order to counter pixel distortion at wide angles, with each such facet requiring a unique planar form of the visibility distribution. Under the above conditions, the computational and storage complexities of this approach can become excessive. On the other hand, when using the direct Fourier transform approach, which maintains the three-dimensional shapes of the visibility distribution and celestial sphere, the non-coplanar visibility component requires no special attention. Furthermore, as the celestial samples are placed directly on the curved surface of the celestial sphere, pixel distortion at wide angles is avoided. In this paper, a number of examples illustrate that under these conditions (very long baselines and very wide fields of view) the costs of the direct Fourier transform may be comparable to (or even lower than) methods that utilise the two-dimensional fast Fourier transform.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-728392019-03-22T04:35:53Z Reconsidering the advantages of the three-dimensional representation of the interferometric transform for imaging with non-coplanar baselines and wide fields of view Smith, D. Young, A. Davidson, David © 2017 ESO. Radio telescopes with baselines that span thousands of kilometres and with fields of view that span tens of degrees have been recently deployed, such as the Low Frequency Array, and are currently being developed, such as the Square Kilometre Array. Additionally, there are proposals for space-based instruments with all-sky imaging capabilities, such as the Orbiting Low Frequency Array. Such telescopes produce observations with three-dimensional visibility distributions and curved image domains. In most work to date, the visibility distribution has been converted to a planar form to compute the brightness map using a two-dimensional Fourier transform. The celestial sphere is faceted in order to counter pixel distortion at wide angles, with each such facet requiring a unique planar form of the visibility distribution. Under the above conditions, the computational and storage complexities of this approach can become excessive. On the other hand, when using the direct Fourier transform approach, which maintains the three-dimensional shapes of the visibility distribution and celestial sphere, the non-coplanar visibility component requires no special attention. Furthermore, as the celestial samples are placed directly on the curved surface of the celestial sphere, pixel distortion at wide angles is avoided. In this paper, a number of examples illustrate that under these conditions (very long baselines and very wide fields of view) the costs of the direct Fourier transform may be comparable to (or even lower than) methods that utilise the two-dimensional fast Fourier transform. 2017 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/72839 10.1051/0004-6361/201526826 EDP Sciences restricted
spellingShingle Smith, D.
Young, A.
Davidson, David
Reconsidering the advantages of the three-dimensional representation of the interferometric transform for imaging with non-coplanar baselines and wide fields of view
title Reconsidering the advantages of the three-dimensional representation of the interferometric transform for imaging with non-coplanar baselines and wide fields of view
title_full Reconsidering the advantages of the three-dimensional representation of the interferometric transform for imaging with non-coplanar baselines and wide fields of view
title_fullStr Reconsidering the advantages of the three-dimensional representation of the interferometric transform for imaging with non-coplanar baselines and wide fields of view
title_full_unstemmed Reconsidering the advantages of the three-dimensional representation of the interferometric transform for imaging with non-coplanar baselines and wide fields of view
title_short Reconsidering the advantages of the three-dimensional representation of the interferometric transform for imaging with non-coplanar baselines and wide fields of view
title_sort reconsidering the advantages of the three-dimensional representation of the interferometric transform for imaging with non-coplanar baselines and wide fields of view
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/72839