From: Owen Shepherd (o.shepherd_at_EmailProtected)
Date: Wed Mar 19 2003 - 09:14:55 EST
Dear SEARFE Participants,
My name is Owen Shepherd and I have joined the SEARFE team to help with
schools. I hope you are getting settled back into school, and are keen to
take some new scans.
You may have heard recently that Australia is bidding to host the
next-generation AUD$200 million LOFAR telescope. The decision about where
LOFAR will be sited will be made later this year. More details on LOFAR can
be found at the LOFAR website <www.lofar.org>. LOFAR will operate at
frequencies from 10 to 240 MHz. These frequencies are at and below the
lower frequency limit of the proposed SKA telescope, which Australia is also
bidding to host. There is now a lot of scientific interest in studying
signals from the early universe in the LOFAR frequency range since the WMAP
satellite results were announced last month. These results indicate that
signals from the "Epoch of Reionisation", when the first stars and galaxies
formed and ionised the surrounding neutral hydrogen, will be in the
frequency range 50 to 160 MHz.
To get an idea of what signals are in the radio-frequency spectrum around
these frequencies, we would like all the SEARFE teams to send in a "standard
scan" from 30 to 110 MHz in 0.1 MHz steps in the WFM receiver mode. Please
email your scans to the SEARFE Data Hypermail archive on the SEARFE website.
Please email the xml data file. You may also wish to email in the jpeg
picture of the spectrum. You will be able to download data files posted to
SEARFE Data by other teams and compare your results with theirs. You might
like to discuss your results and ask questions about results from the other
teams using SEARFE Chat.
We have also enhanced the SEARFE Spectrum Scanner software. The latest
version of the software is available on the SEARFE website at
<http://www.searfe.atnf.csiro.au/software/>. Details on how to install the
new software are also given there. Please contact us if you need any
assistance in installing the new software.
Happy SEARFE-ing and looking forward to seeing your standard scans on SEARFE
Data!
Owen
-- __________________________________Owen Shepherd Outreach Officer School of Physics A28 University of Sydney NSW 2006
Ph 9351 3201 Fax 9351 7726 Email outreach_at_physics.usyd.edu.au __________________________________
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