Giant array of low-cost telescopes

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Giant array of low-cost telescopes could speed hunt for radio bursts, massive black holes

Closely packed radio dishes enable wide-field, real-time sky surveys

Quote

When the immense Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico collapsed in 2020, it left gaping holes in astronomy. Now, a team from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) hopes to address some of the gaps with a very different instrument: a tightly packed array of relatively inexpensive radio dishes that aims to quickly image radio sources across wide swaths of the sky. A nearly completed prototype array in California that the team calls a “radio camera” is already locating dozens of the distant, enigmatic eruptions called fast radio bursts (FRBs). Next year, the team hopes to begin construction on a much larger array with 2000 dishes that, together, will match the size of Arecibo.

Read More: Science