Daily Image
02-09-2010
Hosting SKA CALIM 2010
| Submitter: | Jan Noordam |
| Description: | Last week (22-27 Aug), the 5th SKA Calibration and Imaging (CALIM) workshop was held at ASTRON in Dwingeloo. Specialists from all over the world discussed the challenges of processing the data from the new generation of giant radio telescopes, which will culminate in the Square Km Array (SKA) around 2020. Since the new telescopes will be (much) more sensitive, and will generate (much) more data, it will be a challenge indeed to exploit their full capabilities. The CALIM series of workshops plays a crucial role in getting the world community of radio astronomers to address the challenges together. This particular workshop accrued extra interest because the first new telescopes (especially LOFAR) have started to generate real data by now, which changes the debate in many ways. A common thread is the development of "3rd Generation Calibration", i.e. the treatment of Direction Dependent Effects (DDE). Examples are the ionosphere, and the varying shapes of the station primary beams. New methods are emerging for the measurement of DDE's, and especially their application(!). Interestingly, some of the existing radio telescopes (like the WSRT) play an important role in this, as may be seen e.g. in recent AJDI's by Oleg Smirnov and Ger de Bruyn. But the biggest problem will be to deal with the huge data volumes. This will not only continue to require the most advanced computing technology, but it will also impose an agonizing tradeoff between what is possible and what is feasible. |
| Copyright: | Lars Baehren |
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