Design Progress and Initial Solar Results from Prototype Tests of the Mileura Widefield Array

During the past year, tests of prototype components of the Mileura Widefield Array (MWA) Low Frequency Demonstrator were conducted at the Mileura Station in Western Australia. The MWA, designed to operate at 80-300 MHz, is a joint US-Australian project with multiple science goals including the measurement of heliospheric density, velocity and magnetic fields particularly during solar storms, and the detection of red-shifted hydrogen during the epoch of re-ionization in the early Universe. The techniques to be exploited by the MWA for solar measurements include interplanetary scintillations and Faraday rotation. Three prototype MWA stations were deployed at Mileura to test the antennas and to conduct initial measurements. Using the stations as a radio interferometer, radio bursts were detected with high time and frequency resolution. Design of the array has progressed towards imaging of radio bursts through a proposed augmentation of the core array which would yield an angular resolution of 1 arc-minute, thus allowing precise location of solar radio bursts. The solar results obtained to date and the progress in the development of the MWA for solar applications are described in this paper. The work at Haystack Observatory on this project was supported by NSF and AFOSR.