Abstract Details

Name: Divya Oberoi
Affiliation: NCRA-TIFR
Conference ID: ASI2020_528
Title : Solar metrewave radio astronomy: Entering a new regime
Authors and Co-Authors : Divya Oberoi
Abstract Type : Invited
Abstract Category : Sun and the Solar System
Abstract : Solar radio astronomy has been an active area of research since the early days of radio astronomy. The merits and complementarity of solar radio diagnostics at low-radio frequencies, especially for studying coronal magnetic fields, have also long been established. However, for the Fourier imaging technique of interferometry, it has been very challenging to deal with the extreme time variability, fine spectral structures, and the large span of intrinsic brightness temperatures and spatial scales associated with different kinds of solar radio emissions. Enormous advances in technology over the last few decades have now enabled a new class of instruments. The capabilities of these instruments are much better matched to the needs of solar radio studies. Of these, the design of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is best suited for solar imaging, the essential requirement for which is high quality spectroscopic snapshot imaging. This vast increase in our ability to gather fine grained information about the Sun comes at the cost of correspondingly vast increases in data volumes, algorithmic complexity and computational burden. Extracting science from these data has, in turn, required development of a new generation of analysis tools and techniques. I will present a brief overview of our efforts over the past few years towards building these tools, the exciting new insights and discoveries which they have enabled, along with our near term future plans.