Effects of model incompleteness on the drift-scan calibration of radio telescopes

BK Gehlot; DC Jacobs; JD Bowman; N Mahesh; SG Murray; M Kolopanis; AP Beardsley; Z Abdurashidova; JE Aguirre; P Alexander; ZS Ali; Y Balfour; G Bernardi; TS Billings; RF Bradley; P Bull; J Burba; S Carey; CL Carilli; C Cheng; DR Deboer; M Dexter; E De Lera Acedo; JS Dillon; J Ely; A Ewall-Wice; N Fagnoni; R Fritz; SR Furlanetto; K Gale-Sides; B Glendenning; D Gorthi; B Greig; J Grobbelaar; Z Halday; BJ Hazelton; JN Hewitt; J Hickish; A Julius; NS Kern; J Kerrigan; P Kittiwisit; SA Kohn; A Lanman; P La Plante; T Lekalake; D Lewis; A Liu; YZ Ma; D Macmahon; L Malan; C Malgas; M Maree; ZE Martinot; E Matsetela; A Mesinger; M Molewa; RA Monsalve; MF Morales; T Mosiane; AR Neben; B Nikolic; AR Parsons; R Pascua; N Patra; S Pieterse; JC Pober; N Razavi-Ghods; J Ringuette; J Robnett; K Rosie; MG Santos; P Sims; C Smith; A Syce; M Tegmark; N Thyagarajan; PKG Williams; H Zheng

Journal article

Effects of model incompleteness on the drift-scan calibration of radio telescopes

BK Gehlot, DC Jacobs, JD Bowman, N Mahesh, SG Murray, M Kolopanis, AP Beardsley, Z Abdurashidova, JE Aguirre, P Alexander, ZS Ali, Y Balfour, G Bernardi, TS Billings, RF Bradley, P Bull, J Burba, S Carey, CL Carilli, C Cheng Show all

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | OXFORD UNIV PRESS | Published : 2021

DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stab2072

Abstract

Precision calibration poses challenges to experiments probing the redshifted 21-cm signal of neutral hydrogen from the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization (z ∼30-6). In both interferometric and global signal experiments, systematic calibration is the leading source of error. Though many aspects of calibration have been studied, the overlap between the two types of instruments has received less attention. We investigate the sky based calibration of total power measurements with a HERA dish and an EDGES-style antenna to understand the role of autocorrelations in the calibration of an interferometer and the role of sky in calibrating a total power instrument. Using simulations we study variou..

View full abstract

University of Melbourne Researchers

Bradley Greig Author

Grants

Awarded by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

Funding Acknowledgements

Thisworkwas supported by the National Science Foundation through awards forHERA(AST-1836019) and EDGES(AST-1813850, AST1609450, and AST-1908933). NM was supported by the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) cooperative agreement 80NSSC19K1413. DL was supported by the NASA Solar System Exploration Virtual Institute Cooperative Agreement number 80ARC017M0006. N. Kern gratefully acknowledges support from the MIT Pappalardo Fellowship. HERA is hosted by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory, which is a facility of the National Research Foundation, an agency of the Department of Science and Innovation. EDGES is located at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory. We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji people as the traditional owners of the Observatory site. We thank CSIRO for providing site infrastructure and support. This analysis makes use of following software packages (publiclyavailable and open-source): PYGDSM(https://github.com/telegraph ic/pygdsm), HEALPY (https://pypi.org/project/healpy/), EPHEM (ht tps://pypi.org/project/ephem/), NUMPY (https://numpy.org/), SCIPY (https://www.scipy.org/), and MATPLOTLIB (https://matplotlib.org/).