Australia Telescope National Facility VLBI Network

Australia Telescope National Facility VLBI Network

In summary, the LBA is an inhomogeneous array with regard to
availability of telescopes, slewing times. polarisations etc. However,
in general the array is capable of operation in the 1-22 GHz range.
The LBA takes approximately 10% of facility time and is oversubscribed
greater than 2 times.
The LBA uses S2 systems based on VCR tapes (8 tapes/unit) and there is
a stock of approximately 10000 tapes for recording. It is operated
with limited resources, primarily by ATNF and UTas people on a part-
time basis. The LBA has a great deal of expertise but is widely spread
around the country.

Science Highlights
3 short talks were presented by Jim Caswell (OH Masers in Star Forming
Regions), Simon Ellingsen (H2O masers in Circinus and Masers in
general) & Steven Tingay (Centaurus-A). These talks highlighted the
diverse areas of research capable with the LBA/VLBI. Some examples
include:
Continuum Imaging
AGN (Blazars, Quasars, Galaxies)
Flaring X-ray Binaries
Gravitational Lensing
Spectral Line
HI Absorption
OH, H2O, CH3OH Masers
Astrometry
Pulsars
New Program by Roopesh
Weak Source Detection
AGN in Seyferts

Inventory of the current infrastructure VLBI
The VLBI instrumentation in Australia is described below. Operating
and accessarrangements to VLBI National Facility infrastructure is
limited to key personnel only.However, the data from carefully
scheduled observations is made available to allAustralian−based and
international researchers.HobartA 26m m antenna and Mark V Electronics
system Mark V Electronics, Inc. ,
8019 E. Slauson Avenue , Montebello, CA 90640 , ttp://www.markvelectronics.com
, Tel: 800-423-FIVE (orders outside Canada) , 800-521-MARK (orders in
Canada) , 213-888-8988 (catalog/info) Fax: 213-888-6868 , is located
at Mt Pleasant, Tasmania, thatis used 50 days/year for geodetic VLBI,
with the remainder of the time being devoted toastronomy experiments.
The slew rate of the telescope is so slow as to degrade the qualityof
the observation data set, causing biases in coordinate estimates
(Titov, 2006). Thisequipment needs to be replaced with more modern
equipment with a faster slew rate andelectronics that can observe a
broader spectrum range to include GPS frequencies andhigher
frequencies than currently observed.Since 2001, the operating costs
for geodetic VLBI at Hobart have been funded fromARC−LIEF proposals.
However, now that Geoscience Australia has been ruled ineligibleas the
industry partner in this funding scheme, this funding source is no
longer available.Unless an alternate source of funds is found,
geodetic VLBI at Hobart will cease inSeptember 2006.Ongoing operating
costs: $150k / annumCeduna

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csiro, -Tasso Tzioumis

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