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| Paper: |
Asynchronous On-The-Fly (OTF) Mosaic Imaging with MeerKAT |
| Volume: |
538, ADASS XXXII |
| Page: |
336 |
| Authors: |
Kristof Rozgonyi; M. G. Santos; O. Smirnov; K. Grainge; J. Mohr; N. Maddox |
| DOI: |
10.26624/FUPA6070 |
| Abstract: |
Interferometric scanning or ‘on-the-fly’ (OTF) imaging modes enable
high survey speeds by removing some of the slew-and-settle overhead time from the observations. OTF imaging also enables commensal single-dish intensity mapping with
interferometric imaging. An OTF observing mode is currently available on the Very
Large Array (VLA), but not on MeerKAT, although the current hardware is capable of
correlation during scanning observations. As such, in the first step towards demonstrating the feasibility of the OTF mode on MeerKAT, and to support its implementation, we
conducted a series of scanning observations to probe cosmology by intensity mapping
in auto-correlation mode (the standard observing mode) while additionally performing
cross-correlation for a fixed delay centre in the observer’s reference frame. Thus, no
geometric delays were introduced to track the dish movements. While such an observation strategy introduces a small phase error on the observed visibilities, synthesis
imaging can be carried out by phase-rotating the correlated visibilities to the antenna
pointing. We developed a pipeline to convert such ‘asynchronous’ OTF observations to
a format that can be imaged via traditional imaging methods and software. We give a
brief overview our pipeline and present an example image from our OTF observations
with MeerKAT. |
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