http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23983/

Thursday, August 13, 2009

First Results From The Allen Telescope Array

No word from ET (yet) but some useful data that could help solve one the great mysteries about star formation

The Allen Telescope Array, a few hundred miles north of San Francisco, is one of the world's most unusual and innovative radio telescopes. When completed, the facility will consist of 350 dishes , each just 6 metres in diameter. This provides it with a huge angle of view of some 2.5 degrees, some 17 times larger than its nearest rival. It is also able to monitor simultaneously an unprecedented range of radio frequencies from 0.5 to 11.2 GHz.

The facility is a joint operation between the SETI Institute in Mountain View and the University of California, Berkeley, which determines where to point it. Wherever the array points, its large angle of view means that several stars of interest to the SETI Institute can always be studied as well.

The facility began operating in 2007 with an array of 42 dishes and today the team have posted an interesting update of its first results and progress towards its various scientific goals.

The highlight is the images it has made of the movement of atomic hydrogen clouds in the intergalactic space between nearby galaxies, whihc could help solve one of the big mysteries of star formation.

Many galaxies do not appear to contain enough gas to sustain star formation in the way astronomers expect. That's a puzzle but atomic hydrogen may be the solution. Astronomers do not include atomic hydrogen gas in the reservoir from which they make their calculations because the gas is found largely in intergalactic regions where star formation does not take place.

What the Allen Array team are looking for is evidence that atomic hydrogen clouds are sucked into star forming regions of galaxies where they can contribute to stellar formation.

That's interesting stuff and may yield some fascinating results in the near future.

But no word yet on any broadcasts from ET.

Ref: http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1175: The Allen Telescope Array: The First Widefield, Panchromatic, Snapshot Radio Camera