In the first project pursued under this agreement, the MPIfR will contribute $299,000 to upgrade the continent-wide Very Long Baseline Array's (VLBA) capability to receive radio emissions at a frequency of 22 GHz. This improvement will enhance the VLBA's scientific productivity and will be especially important for cutting-edge research in cosmology and enigmatic cosmic objects such as gamma-ray blazars.

"This agreement follows a number of years of cooperation between our institutions and recognizes the importance of international collaboration for the future of astronomical research," said Fred K.Y. Lo, NRAO Director.

"Our two institutions have a number of common research goals, and joining forces to keep all our telescopes at the forefront of technology will be highly beneficial for the science," said Anton Zensus, Director at MPIfR.

In addition to the VLBA, the NRAO operates the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico and the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia. The MPIfR operates the 100-meter Effelsberg Radio Telescope in Gera number of and the 12-meter APEX sub-millimeter telescope in 5100 m altitude in the Chilean Atacama desert (together with the European Southern Observatory and the Swedish Onsala Space Observatory). With the 100-meter telescope it is part of the VLBA network in providing transatlantic baselines. Both institutions are members of a global network of telescopes (the Global VLBI Network) that uses simultaneous observations to produce extremely high-resolution images, and another network (the High Sensitivity Array) that uses the same technique with large telescopes to observe especially faint celestial objects. With this technique, NRAO telescopes work with MPIfR's Effelsberg telescope to produce images hundreds of times more detailed than those from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Both institutions are also part of the international collaboration building the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile and of the international planning effort to build a Square Kilometer Array.


Posted by: Sean    Source

---