GRBs, supernovae, and the annihilation of primordial black holes are all examples of sources that might produce strong, brief pulses detectable in the low end of the radio spectrum. Productive searching for these pulses requires long-term, Galactic noise-limited surveillance of a very large (preferably, all sky) field-of-view, which turns out to be relatively easy and inexpensive at low radio frequencies. To this end, our group at Virginia Tech has developed the Eight-meter wavelength Transient Array (ETA), which is an array of 12 dual-polarized dipoles achieving ~400 m2 effective aperture with Galactic noise-limited performance over an 18 MHz bandwidth centered at 38 MHz, located in a relatively radio-quiet site in Western North Carolina. The instrument is sensitive to single pulses with dispersion measures ranging from ~10 to ~1000 pc/cm3. In this talk I will describe the instrument, present some results from preliminary observations, and address some "lessons learned" which may be relevant to the development of the Long Wavelength Array, which requires similar technology.
1 September 2006
Array Operations Center Auditorium
All NRAO employees are invited to attend via video, available in Charlottesville Room 230, Green Bank Room 137 and Tucson N525.