  We report the use of the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) to conduct
polarimetric observations of the sky at 5 GHz. The ATCA is normally operated as
an interferometer array, but these observations were conducted in a split array
mode in which the antenna elements were used as single-dishes with their beams
staggered to simultaneously cover a wide area of sky with a resolution of 10
arcmin. The linearly polarized sky radiation was fully characterized from
measurements, made over a range of parallactic angles, of the cross correlated
signals from the orthogonal linear feeds. We describe the technique and present
a polarimetric image of the Vela supernova remnant made as a test of the
method. The development of the techniques was motivated by the need for
wide-field imaging of the foreground contamination of the polarized component
of the cosmic microwave background signal.
