First Light for the Long Wavelength Demonstrator Array
Abstract
The Long Wavelength Demonstrator Array (LWDA) is a technology pathfinder for the Long Wavelength Array, which will be a 50 station synthesis imaging array operating in the 20-80 MHz band. The LWDA operates over a subset of the LWA range, covering 60-80 MHz, and produces 2 fully independent steerable beams each of 1.6 MHz bandwidth. The LWDA is a 16 element station consisting of active dipole antennas, analog gain stages, flexible FPGA-based digital receivers and a digital beamformer. The digital receiver and data acquisition system allow us to cross correlate each of the 120 pairs of antennas in the array to produce low-resolution images of the sky. In late October, 2006 the LWDA hardware installation was completed at a site near the center of VLA in central New Mexico. We describe the design of the array, show data from the commissioning observations, and describe some of the experiments that will be carried out with the array.
Basic research in radio astronomy at the Naval Research Laboratory is funded by NRL/ONR.- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #209
- Pub Date:
- May 2007
- Bibcode:
- 2007AAS...20925504R