Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...210.8612j&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society Meeting 210, #86.12; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.196
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Low-frequency radio astronomy is recognized as one of the few areas of astronomy that would clearly benefit from lunar basing. This is particularly true for locations on the far side of the Moon, a unique location because it provides simultaneous shielding from terrestrial interference and from strong solar radio bursts (half of the time). All lunar based instruments are also free of the serious effects of Earth's ionosphere, which is opaque at frequencies below 20-30 MHz and introduces large phase errors below 100 MHz.
As a first step, a relatively small radio array on the near side of the Moon (ROLSS, the Radio Observatory for Lunar Sortie Science) has been proposed to NASA's Lunar Sortie Science Opportunity program. ROLSS will be able to image radio emission from coronal mass ejections (type II radio bursts) and fast electron streams (type III bursts), and will also produce the first high-resolution images of the sky at low frequencies. It is possible that solar observations below a few MHz may be limited by the transient lunar ionosphere; a simple experiments to monitor the lunar ionosphere with riometry (LAPS, the Lunar Array Precursor Station), has also been proposed to the Lunar Sortie Science program. Finally, the lunar far side is the best location for large radio arrays designed to produce the highest quality images of redshifted neutral Hydrogen before and during the epoch of reionization. This is an area of fundamental importance, and will require a large number of array antenna elements. One concept for this far-future array is MERIT, the Moon-based Epoch of Reionization Imaging Telescope), which is partly based on technologies to be demonstrated by ROLSS.
This work has been carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Burns Jason
Jones Llanwyn D.
Lazio Joe
MacDowall R.
Weiler Kurt
No associations
LandOfFree
Towards a Lunar Epoch of Reionization Telescope does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Towards a Lunar Epoch of Reionization Telescope, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Towards a Lunar Epoch of Reionization Telescope will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1032615