Daily Image
01-11-2006
An ionospheric amoeba
| Submitter: | Oleg Smirnov |
| Description: | This is a simulation of how a single bright point source would be seen through an undulating ionosphere, by a LOFAR-like radio telescope with 27 antennas and a size of 30 km. It is a recreation of an actual observation made with the VLA @74 MHz by Rick Perley and Gary Bust. The scale of the Travelling Ionospheric Disturbance (TID) is 100 km. The linear part of the ionospheric phase screen just moves the source as a whole. This is bad enough because it smears out the integrated image. But the non-linear part actually distorts the source, which is worse. This is the case when the three lines do not intersect in a single point. The task of LOFAR calibration is to deal with this kind of problem. If watching this movie makes you a little seasick, rest assured that this is quite normal. |
| Copyright: | The MeqTree Foundation 2006 |
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