Discovering the Sky at the Longest Wavelengths



DSL2015 – Science Workshop
February 2-3 2015, Dwingeloo, the Netherlands

 

General information

The radio sky at frequencies below ~30 MHz (wavelengths longer than ~10 m) is virtually unobservable from Earth due to the opaqueness of the ionosphere. Deploying an Ultra-Long-Wavelength (ULW) radio telescope in space would open this frequency band for science in astronomy, cosmology and space science.

 

In the context of the joint ESA-CAS mission opportunity (1) , a Chinese-European team is preparing an ULW radio interferometer mission proposal “DSL”. This concept was presented at the 2nd ESA-CAS joint mission workshop in Copenhagen in September 2014 (2).

 

A one-page summary discription of the proposed mission and its science can be found here.

 

The aim of this workshop is to discuss science themes which can be addressed with a long-wavelength interferometer in space, such as DSL. The science themes considered for the DSL mission includes:

  • Full-sky continuum survey of discrete sources, including ultra-steep spectrum extragalactic sources, pulsars, and transients (galactic and extragalactic)
  • Full-sky map of (galactic) continuum diffuse emission
  • Search for signatures of Dark Ages
  • Radio recombination lines (of “macro-atoms”)
  • Search for “exo-Jupiters”
  • Solar-terrestrial physics and planetary sciences
  • Radio showers from high-energy particles (and neutrinos) interacting with the Moon

The science workshop starts off with a session describing the DSL system concept and related technologies with the aim to clarify the system parameters which define the scientific capabilities.

 

The workshop will also include a discussion concerning parties’ interest in participating in the DSL endeavour.

 

(1 )http://sci.esa.int/2015-esa-cas-joint-call

(2) http://sci.esa.int/jump.cfm?oid=54130