A balloon-borne very long baseline interferometry experiment in the stratosphere: Systems design and developments

The balloon-borne very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) experiment is a technical feasibility study for performing radio interferometry in the stratosphere. The flight model has been developed. A balloon-borne VLBI station will be launched to establish interferometric fringes with ground-based VL...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Advances in space research 2019-01, Vol.63 (1), p.779-793
Main Authors: Doi, Akihiro, Kono, Yusuke, Kimura, Kimihiro, Nakahara, Satomi, Oyama, Tomoaki, Okada, Nozomi, Satou, Yasutaka, Yamashita, Kazuyoshi, Matsumoto, Naoko, Baba, Mitsuhisa, Yasuda, Daisuke, Suzuki, Shunsaku, Hasegawa, Yutaka, Honma, Mareki, Tanaka, Hiroaki, Ishimura, Kosei, Murata, Yasuhiro, Shimomukai, Reiho, Tachi, Tomohiro, Saito, Kazuya, Watanabe, Naohiko, Bando, Nobutaka, Kameya, Osamu, Yonekura, Yoshinori, Sekido, Mamoru, Inoue, Yoshiyuki, Sakamoto, Hiraku, Kogiso, Nozomu, Shoji, Yasuhiro, Ogawa, Hideo, Fujisawa, Kenta, Narita, Masanao, Shibai, Hiroshi, Fuke, Hideyuki, Uehara, Kenta, Koyama, Shoko
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Balloon
Black holes
Interferometry
Radio astronomy
Radio telescopes
Satellite system
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Summary:The balloon-borne very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) experiment is a technical feasibility study for performing radio interferometry in the stratosphere. The flight model has been developed. A balloon-borne VLBI station will be launched to establish interferometric fringes with ground-based VLBI stations distributed over the Japanese islands at an observing frequency of approximately 20 GHz as the first step. This paper describes the system design and development of a series of observing instruments and bus systems. In addition to the advantages of avoiding the atmospheric effects of absorption and fluctuation in high frequency radio observation, the mobility of a station can improve the sampling coverage (“uv-coverage”) by increasing the number of baselines by the number of ground-based counterparts for each observation day. This benefit cannot be obtained with conventional arrays that solely comprise ground-based stations. The balloon-borne VLBI can contribute to a future progress of research fields such as black holes by direct imaging.
ISSN:0273-1177
1879-1948
DOI:10.1016/j.asr.2018.09.020