Speaker
Level for award<br> (Hons, MSc, <br> PhD)?
PhD
Abstract content <br> (Max 300 words)
An ideal interferometer assumes that the primary beam patterns of all antennas are to first order identical, pointed in exactly the same direction, and stable during the time of the observation. In practice this is not true for several reasons (a) parallactic rotation in an alt-az mount, (b) pointing errors, and (c) mechanical deformations of the telescope structure. This causes direction-dependent calibrations errors, which result in dynamic-range-limiting artefacts in the images. In the first phase of this project, we will quantify this effect via simulations, answering questions such as, how much deviation from the ideal primary beam can we tolerate to keep the resulting errors within a certain budget. In the second phase, we will build on existing approaches (such as pointing error solutions) to find new methods for solving and correcting for primary beam deformations directly from the interferometric data itself.
Main supervisor (name and email)<br>and his / her institution
Prof Oleg Smirnov
o.smirnov@ru.ac.za
Apply to be<br> considered for a student <br> award (Yes / No)?
Yes
Would you like to <br> submit a short paper <br> for the Conference <br> Proceedings (Yes / No)?
No
