2-6 September 2024
CJD Bonn Castell
Europe/Berlin timezone
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Contribution

CJD Bonn Castell

Current developments with the LBA

Speakers

  • Dr. Chris PHILLIPS

Primary authors

Co-authors

Content

The Long Baseline Array (LBA) is the only Southern Hemisphere VLBI network, operated as a collaboration between CSIRO, the University of Tasmania, HartRAO, and SpaceOps New Zealand. The LBA has an "open sky" policy and observes for typically 25 days per year, with most of this time scheduled in four or five intensive sessions, interspersed with single observations as required. Most experiments are conducted at frequencies between 1.4 and 22 GHz, although ATCA and Mopra can observe at 43 and 86 GHz. Experiments are correlated by CSIRO staff using the DiFX software correlator running on a supercomputer at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Perth. In this talk, I will discuss the current capabilities of the LBA, as well as current and planned developments for the individual antennas, such as "Ultra-wideband" receivers and a cryogenically cooled phased array feed for the Parkes Murriyang telescopes, and a new GPU-based digital backend for the ATCA. In the era of the SKA, the LBA will be positioned to play a major role in VLBI follow-up of discoveries and will continue to play a significant role in global VLBI science.