Daily Image
29-10-2008
Big is Beautiful: e-VLBI with and without Effelsberg
| Submitter: | Michael Garrett |
| Description: | We recently obtained e-VLBI short observations of IC2497 - a nearby galaxy, located close to the unusual gaseous nebula, "Hanny's voorwerp" (more about this fascinating object in a future AJDI!). The data were transferred to JIVE with a data rate of 512 Mbps at each of the telescopes. The entire process was flawless - it is impressive to see how e-VLBI has matured over the last few years. Recently, the 100-metre telescope of the MPIfR at Effelsberg (codename: EB) also joined the e-VLBI network. The figure shown above, presents images of IC2497 both with (left) and without (right) Effelsberg in the array (both images are displayed using the same colour map). The offset of the source from the centre of the map, reflects the difference between the catalogued VLA FIRST position of the radio source and the VLBI position of the AGN core. Clearly, the detection of faint sub-mJy sources such as IC2497 greatly benefits from having Effelsberg in the array. Together with the WSRT (roughly equivalent to a 90-metre telescope), baselines with these telescopes tend to dominate naturally weighted images such as those presented here, and even in a short run of ~ 2 hours, noise levels of a few tens of microJy can easily be achieved. These new data will form part of the thesis of Hayden Rampadarath. |
| Copyright: | ASTRON |
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