Visit to the Jansky Very Large Array, Long Wavelength Array, and Pie Town Very Long Baseline Interferometry station

Many thanks to Laura Barich and Judy Stanley, NRAO Education and Public Outreach, for their wonderful help during my visit.

 

Below, Larry Brothers, Array Operator, very busy at work, many thanks !

In my old Head of Telescope Operations office :-)

LWA # 1 station electronics container

Pie Town VLBI dish

Pie Town New Mexico - PIE1 GPS CORS Reference Station

Station PIE1 is located next to the Pie Town Very Long Baseline Interferometry antenna. It is operated by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm

It is important to monitor the ionospheric conditions above the Jansky Very Large Array and the Long Wavelength Array.

 NOAA National Geodetic Survey CORS pages:
http://geodesy.noaa.gov/CORS/PIE1 
Coordinates:
ftp://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cors/coord/coord_08/pie1_08.coord.txt 

Related posts:
http://herrero-radio-astronomy.blogspot.com/search/label/VLA 
http://herrero-radio-astronomy.blogspot.com/search/label/NRAO%20VLBA 
http://herrero-radio-astronomy.blogspot.com/search/label/Long%20Wavelength%20Array
http://herrero-radio-astronomy.blogspot.com/search/label/Ionospheric%20Modulations

Jansky Very Large Array observations of decimetric type III bursts and electron beam trajectories - Chen et al. 2012

Wonderful paper !! :

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/bib_query?arXiv:1211.3058    with link to a free pdf

Abstract:

"We report observations of type III radio bursts at decimeter wavelengths (type IIIdm bursts) -- signatures of suprathermal electron beams propagating in the low corona -- using the new technique of radio dynamic imaging spectroscopy provided by the recently upgraded Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). For the first time, type IIIdm bursts were imaged with high time and frequency resolution over a broad frequency band, allowing electron beam trajectories in the corona to be deduced. Together with simultaneous hard X-ray (HXR) and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) observations, we show these beams emanate from an energy release site located in the low corona at a height below ~15 Mm, and propagate along a bundle of discrete magnetic loops upward into the corona. Our observations enable direct measurements of the plasma density along the magnetic loops, and allow us to constrain the diameter of these loops to be less than 100 km. These over-dense and ultra-thin loops reveal the fundamentally fibrous structure of the Sun's corona. The impulsive nature of the electron beams, their accessibility to different magnetic field lines, and the detailed structure of the magnetic release site revealed by the radio observations indicate that the localized energy release is highly fragmentary in time and space, supporting a bursty reconnection model that involves secondary magnetic structures for magnetic energy release and particle acceleration."

EVLA - A new Era in Stellar Radio Astronomy - Gregg Hallinan 2011

Probing Stellar and Substellar Magnetospheres - Gregg Hallinan 2011

EVLA Publications - Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae

Whitham D. Reeve's wonderful panoramas of the Long Wavelength Array and the EVLA

click images for enlargements

Long Wavelength Array first station near the EVLA center and the Antenna Assembly building

Related posts:

http://herrero-radio-astronomy.blogspot.com/2010/04/long-wavelength-array-progress-april.html

http://herrero-radio-astronomy.blogspot.com/2011/06/expanded-very-large-array-new-telescope.html

See also Whit's Radio Science and Radio Astronomy pages:

http://www.reeve.com/Radio_Science.htm

My thanks to Whit !

The Expanded Very Large Array, a New Telescope for New Science

Perley with 3 co authors, 2011:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.0532  free 6 page pdf
describe the upgraded array.

This is one of several papers that will appear in a forthcoming Astrophysical Journal EVLA special issue.

I worked in the construction of the original VLA in the 1970s, and was Head of the Telescope Operations Division.

NRAO home page
http://www.nrao.edu/

EVLA home page
https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/evla/index

Wikipedia VLA article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Array

More VLA images at
http://images.nrao.edu/Telescopes/VLA