Remote sensing of the Ionosphere over the Murchison Radio Observatory, Western Australia, Leading to an Understanding of Fine Scale Behaviour

Details Remote sensing of the Ionosphere over the Murchison Radio Observatory, Western Australia, Leading to an Understanding of Fine Scale Behaviour Remote sensing of the Ionosphere over the Murchison Radio Observatory, Western Australia, Leading to an Understanding of Fine Scale Behaviour

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsa43b1764h&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SA43B-1764

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

[2403] Ionosphere / Active Experiments, [2435] Ionosphere / Ionospheric Disturbances, [2437] Ionosphere / Ionospheric Dynamics, [2494] Ionosphere / Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

The Murchison Radio Observatory (MRO) is the home of radio astronomy in Australia. Projects currently under development at the MRO include a low-frequency instrument, the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). The MWA is an aperture synthesis, imaging array that when complete will comprise approximately 8,000 dipole antennas operating in the frequency range, 80 to 300 MHz. Signals in this frequency range are subject to distortions caused by the ionosphere. The effects of scintillation and faraday rotation degrade image quality. In order to ‘unwind’ faraday rotation, the distribution of the electron content in the ionosphere must be determined. Knowledge of the absolute total electron content (TEC) provides information about this distribution. This step is necessary in order to study processes in space involving magnetism. Over a period of two years, TEC measurements have been made over the MRO using high-precision, dual-frequency, GPS systems. Continuous measurements were performed for 12 months and campaign-based measurements at other times, due to the remote location of the MRO. The determination of the GPS receiver biases used to calculate TEC were studied with respect to changing temperatures. TEC measurements are compared to the results of modelling conducted previously (Kennewell et. al. 2005) as part of Australia’s bid to host the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope (SKA). Further, due to the fine grained nature of measurements (on the order of 0.01-0.03 TEC units), fine-scale structure can be resolved in the behaviour of the ionosphere in both temporal and spatial domains and is discussed. This work too, is laying a foundation for the accurate characterisation of the ionosphere over the MRO which is also the possible future site of the SKA. Plans to extend this work and the implementation of useful new measurement regimes are discussed, enabled by facilities currently being established as part of Australia’s ongoing commitment to radio astronomy on the MRO.

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