Daily Image
09-06-2010
Queen's Commissioner visits EMBRACE
| Submitter: | Truus van den Brink-Havinga |
| Description: | On May 20 the Queen’s Commissioner of the Province of Drenthe, Mr. Jacques Tichelaar, paid an informal working visit to the EMBRACE instrument located at the site of the Westerbork Telescope. He was accompanied by Mrs. Janny Vlietstra, Provincial Executive for Economic Affairs in Drenthe and Mr. Sicco Heldoorn, Mayor of the city of Assen. After a presentation by our director Mike Garrett, everybody moved to the Embrace site were work is advancing to an interferometry test on CasA. Obviously not everybody could make it into the same picture while in the entrance of the EMBRACE hall but it was clear that our high level visitors showed a keen interest in becoming somewhat more familiar with these exciting developments. Furthermore, since the region traditionally takes a keen interest in ASTRON and its Endeavours (ranging from the Dwingeloo telescope, through WSRT, instruments for the La Palma, Hawaii and ESO observatories, various ESA Space projects, to LOFAR and SKA), the high guests took the opportunity to exchange views with the ASTRON representatives on ISKAF 2010 and SKA developments in general. EMBRACE was developed under the FP6 SKADS programme and focuses on the development of the Aperture Plane Phased Array which uses fast digital technology to make a flexible, multitasking telescope that can do many different astronomical observations all at the same time. The entire demonstrator is made up of small tiles of just over 1m x 1m. Having no moving parts, the planar array is steered electronically to allow multiple independent Fields of View. SKADS ended December 31, 2009 and is partly funded by the European Community and includes partners from 26 institutes in 13 countries. |
| Copyright: | ASTRON SKA Programme Office |
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