The Murchison Widefield Array: The Square Kilometre Array Precursor at Low Radio Frequencies
Name
Hewitt_The Murchison widefield.pdf
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9.01 MB
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Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Goeke, Robert F.
Lonsdale, Colin John
Cappallo, Roger J.
Corey, Brian E.
Hewitt, Jacqueline N.
Kincaid, Barton B.
Kratzenberg, Eric W.
McWhirter, Stephen R.
Morgan, Edward H.
Remillard, Ronald Alan
Date Issued
January 2013
Journal
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
Publisher
CSIRO Publishing
Citation
Tingay, S. J., R. Goeke, J. D. Bowman, D. Emrich, S. M. Ord, D. A. Mitchell, M. F. Morales, et al. “The Murchison Widefield Array: The Square Kilometre Array Precursor at Low Radio Frequencies.” Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia 30 (January 2013).
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is one of three Square Kilometre Array Precursor telescopes and is located at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in the Murchison Shire of the mid-west of Western Australia, a location chosen for its extremely low levels of radio frequency interference. The MWA operates at low radio frequencies, 80–300 MHz, with a processed bandwidth of 30.72 MHz for both linear polarisations, and consists of 128 aperture arrays (known as tiles) distributed over a ~3-km diameter area. Novel hybrid hardware/software correlation and a real-time imaging and calibration systems comprise the MWA signal processing backend. In this paper, the as-built MWA is described both at a system and sub-system level, the expected performance of the array is presented, and the science goals of the instrument are summarised.
MIT Department
Haystack Observatory
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1017/pasa.2012.007
