E-VLBI

Image of the source IRC+10420 submitted by Magarrett. The lower resolution image on the left image was taken with the UK's MERLIN array and shows the shell of maser emission produced by an expanding shell of gas with a diameter about 200 times that of our own Solar System. The shell of gas was ejected from a supergiant star (10 times the mass of our sun) at the centre of the emission about 900 years ago. The corresponding EVN e-VLBI image (right) shows the much finer structure of the masers because of the higher resolution of the VLBI array.

e-VLBI is a type of very long baseline interferometry that uses high-speed optical fibres to link VLBI radio telescopes in real-time. In Europe, 6 radio telescopes of the European VLBI Network EVN are now connected with Gigabit per second links via their National Research Networks and the Pan-European research network GEANT.

The following image shows the first science produced by the European VLBI Network using e-VLBI. The data from 6 telescopes were processed in real time at the European Data Processing centre at JIVE. The Netherlands Academic Research Network SURFnet provides 6 x 1 Gbit/s connectivity between JIVE and the GEANT network.

External links

[E-MERLIN] fibre linked radio telescope array used in VLBI observations.
[GEANT]

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.