Speaker
Description
The Murchison Widefield Array is a radio interferometer that, over the years, has operated in different configurations observing the sky with a wide frequency band (72–300 MHz). Phase I observed using an abundance of short baselines to resolve large scale structures (2′− 15◦) reaching a noise level of 50 – 100 mJy/beam along the Galactic plane. Phase II, doubling the length of the baselines was able to capture the fine details of the smaller scales (45′′− 20′) with ∼mJy/beam noise levels due to the lower confusion limit over long integration times.
The joint deconvolution of these two surveys, performed using a GPU-based Image Domain Gridding (IDG) extension of WSCLEAN, enables to obtain an image of the sky with a synergistic combination of resolution and sensitivity to all spatial scales. We imaged the Galactic plane within 340◦ < l < 260◦ and |b| < 10◦ with an RMS noise varying from 10 to 2 mJy/beam across the observing band, and we are currently working on the region of the Galactic centre.
In this talk I will provide you an overview of the methodology applied to create the images, and I will show some results along with a summary of the science topics we can carry out with these data, such as the consequences of free-free absorption at low radio frequencies.
| In-person or online? | online |
|---|---|
| keywords | survey, galactic plane, imaging |
| Career level | Student |
