Daily Image
03-08-2009
Dragon's Teeth
| Submitter: | Dion Kant |
| Description: | Here is a picture of the current status of the EMBRACE Westerbork Station (EWS). It gives a pretty good impression of the sheer number of installed elements. Seeing it in real life is even more impressive. It reminds one of the dragon's teeth in Greek mythology, which instantly produced regiments of soldiers when sown into the ground. Currently, the hardware installation is almost half-way. Fortunately the installation of the hardware goes much faster than the design. Last week, three team members from OPAR Nancay (France) came over to be involved in the installation and testing process, to obtain the kind of hands-on experience that will be required for their own EMBRACE station (September). The array will now undergo an intensive programme of engineering tests, but a 5 by 5 tile configuration sub-array will be available for astronomical testing within a couple of months. EWS is on its way to become an aperture array of >160 m^2. In total there will be 20736 elements, organized in tiles. Each tile provides a field-of-view of 250 square degrees @ 1 GHz and hosts 144 elements in a dual polarised configuration. Currently, there are 64 tiles installed, with around 9000 elements. All electronic receiver channels have been tested, and the array proves to be reliable. No broken receiver path has been encountered yet! |
| Copyright: | ASTRON |
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