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, 2007). 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 2007, 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 2007.Ongoing operating costs: $150k /

annumCeduna

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