eVLBI fringes to Arecibo

eVLBI research achieved another first on Friday 10th September when real-time fringes were detected between the 305m Arecibo radio telescope and three antennas located in Europe. In the one hour experiment, EVN telescopes in Cambridge (UK), Torun (Poland) and Westerbork (Netherlands) joined Arecibo to observe ICRF reference source, 0528+134. Four 1MHz subbands were observed in two polarizations with 2-bit sampling resulting in a data rate of 32Mb/s per telescope. Data flowed into the JIVE correlator with negligible packet loss throughout the test and normal fringes were found on all baselines. Working in in2net and net2out mode, Mark5 once again proved to be a reliable and easy-to-use interface to the networks, at both telescope and correlator.

Arecibo-Torun is believed to be the longest real-time interferometer baseline ever created. The first transatlantic, eVLBI image was also produced (amplitude and phase plot).

The data path from each telescope to JIVE was as follows:

Arecibo:
PRISANET (University of Puerto Rico) » AMPATH (Florida International University) » Abilene (Internet2) » SURFnet

Cambrige:
MERLIN (to Jodrell Bank) » Network North-West » UKERNA » GÉANT » SURFnet

Torun:
TORMAN (Municipal Computer Network in Torun) » PIONIER (Polish Optical Internet) » GÉANT » SURFnet

Pictures

• The 305m Arecibo telescope
• Happy scientists and an engineer at JIVE.
• The Torun telescope at the end of the test
• Busy people in the Torun control Room.