Another opening, another show

The first phase of the Allen Telescope Array (ATA)--the new UC Berkeley/SETI Institute radio array under construction at Hat Creek--is now up and running. This new radio array exploits cheap 20-foot aluminum radio dishes to synthesize a large collecting area and wide field of view. The ATA is also a multitasker: It can can look at different parts of the sky at the same time (the telescopic equivalent of having eyes in the back of your head), maximizing available observing time.

The ATA can pull the same trick in the frequency domain, taking data anywhere between 0.5 and 11 Gigahertz on any dish at any time. If you were to compare that to how the human ear processes sound, it would be no great shakes--we can process sound waves spanning about ten octaves. But for a radio telescope, it's like suddenly being able to hear the whole orchestra when, before, you could only pick up the flute or the bass.

The ATA will also be a full-time SETI instrument. That's not to say that it won't be doing "traditional" radio astronomy, too: It can do both at the same time. So data will be piping through the SETI computers 24/7, stepping up the speed of targeted searches by 100x.

This first phase included forty-two dishes; the plan is to bring that number up to 350--when more money comes along. Half of the $50 million spent on the ATA to date came from Paul Allen's foundation. (For ideas on where they might come up with the rest, check out last week's column.)

Friends in high places

I'm so proud!

My friends Dunc Lorimer and Maura McLaughlin just published a discovery that, according to one press release, "could open up a new field in astrophysics."

What they found was this: A radio burst so strong, so short, and so distant that they don't know quite what it is. It could be the radio rebound from a neutron star collision, the "last gasp" of an evaporating black hole, or some other exotic event that we haven't even thought of yet.

The data set that captured the burst was actually six years old and had already been through the data-ringer once. But the first time, the team was only looking for repeating pulses--that is, for pulsars. It wasn't until David Narkevik, an undergrad at West Virginia University, took a second pass at the data that the isolated burst was uncovered.

So far, the burst is the only known radio event of its kind. The next one might be discovered in other archival pulsar surveys, or we might have to wait for a new facility like Australia's SKA Pathfinder, a testbed for the planned Square Kilometer Array, to come on line.

The burst was observed with Australia's Parkes radio telescope.

Image credit: Lorimer et al., NRAO/AUI/NSF. Greyscale represents visible light; contours are radio data

Save room for popcorn

The Bad Astronomy Blog reports that Jodrell Bank will be turning the Lovell radio telescope's 76-meter dish into a giant movie screen as part of the telescope's 50th anniversary celebration--or "golden jubilee," as they say across the pond. From the press release:

The huge dish of the Telescope will act as a giant video screen displaying images of early space exploration, astronomy, engineering, the history and future of radio astronomy and the construction of the Lovell telescope itself. These spectacular moving images will be combined with music and a specially-commissioned light and laser show.

It's all part of the British National Space Centre's Space 50, a celebration of the "first 50 years" of the UK's role in space exploration and research. Sure, 1957 seems like a sort of arbitrary "birthday," but it marks the launch of the first Skylark rocket, a science payload delivery vehicle which was in use through 2005; Lovell's first light; and the launch of Sputnik 1--the Soviet satellite that was the first artificial object to orbit the Earth. (Scientists at Jodrell Bank actually hooked up a transmitter to the Lovell dish and tracked Sputnik's carrier rocket about a week after it launched.)

There is a full slate of events planned, including everything from the usual lectures to a yacht race to the Stubble Space Telescope, which defies my pedestrian American understanding but which must fill the same niche the Corn Palace fills on this side of the Atlantic.