Daily Image
12-06-2009
First LOFAR TBB busy week
| Submitter: | Jean-Mathias Griessmeier for the LOFAR TBB team |
| Description: | LOFAR is the first major radio telescope that has Transient Buffer Boards (TBB) as an integral part of the system. These boards continuously store the last few seconds/minutes of the incoming data at full resolution. In some way, this allows astronomers to look back into the past, which is extremely useful for the study of transient astrophysical phenomena which are by definition unexpected and hard to detect. The TBBs are also essential for the detection of cosmic rays with LOFAR. From 30.3. to 3.4., ASTRON hosted the first "TBB busy week", with a strong participation of the Nijmegen team in addition to people from ASTRON and Groningen. This TBB busy week had two main goals: (a) Enable direct writing of TBB data to CEP (instead of passing through the LCUs), and (b) Study and improve the trigger algorithm in the FPGAs. Another activity was the successful generation of dynamic spectra from TBB data. The lower picture shows such a dynamic spectrum between 87 and 89 MHz. One can clearly see frequency modulation of 3 different FM radio stations. The bottom one is Radio 2, transmitting at 88.0 MHz with 100 kW from Smilde. The top one is less powerful: it's 3 FM transmitting with 35 kW from Smilde (88.6 MHz). A likely candidate for the signal at 88.3 MHz is Nordwestradio from Bremen. This busy week was an excellent start, but there is more work waiting. The second TBB busy week is already being planned! |
| Copyright: | Jean-Mathias Griessmeier |
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