Abstract Details
| Name: Anjali Yelikar Affiliation: IISER Thiruvananthapuram Conference ID: ASI2016_692 Title : An Undergraduate Dual-band Radio Interferometer Authors and Co-Authors : Devansh Agarwal IISER Thiruvananthapuram, Pranshu Mandal IISER Thiruvananthapuram, Kanchan Soni IISER Thiruvananthapuram, Pratik Kumar IISER Thiruvananthapuram Abstract Type : Poster Abstract Category : Instrumentation and Techniques Abstract : A two element dual-band intensity interferometer is built at IISER-Thiruvananthapuram by the undergraduates. The interferometer supports observations in C and Ku-band simultaneously with single polarization intensities and dual polarization intensities in both bands. The setup consists of commercially available C-band 1.8 meter satellite dishes and is assembled using affordable components, making it easily expandable and mobile. The interferometer has a baseline of 20 meters providing an angular resolution of 13' and 7' respectively for C and Ku-band. The individual dishes are calibrated using geostationary satellites in the C/Ku-band. The setup performs correlation of the intensities from the two dishes, discarding any phase information based on the Hanbury-Brown and Twiss effect. We developed a system for accurate telescope pointing, using sensors and simple electronics. With a sensitivity of 350 Jy in Ku-band, we aimed to detect and measure the flux of few radio sources and study their size and physical properties. We will present the results of our experiment here. We also discuss our plans and progress to develop an automated tracking system and use it to make an all northern radio sky visibility map at 4 GHz and 11.2 GHz. |