Capabilities and Technical Specifications of the ATAProposal Submission Forms |
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| Proposal announcement: The Allen Telescope Array is accepting proposals from the general user community for the second half of 2008. Proposals are due April 18, 2008 at 5pm PDT. A full set of instrument parameters and proposal forms is available at http://ral.berkeley.edu/ata/Proposal/Proposals.html
The ATA is currently a 42-antenna centimeter-wave interferometer located at Hat Creek California with a frequency range of 500 MHz to 11 GHz. Observations may be done in either correlator mode for imaging, or beam-former mode for individual point source observations. Observers will have two independently tunable frequency bands available for observations. The correlator has 1024 channels and has a full instantaneous bandwidth of 105 MHz. Beam-former observations can make use of the Prelude SETI processor, which can produce 44 million channels at 0.7 Hz resolution for two dual-polarization beams at two frequencies. A pulsar backend connected to the beamformer is also available. The primary beam of the telescope is 2.5 degrees and the synthesized beam is about 2-4 arcmin at a frequency of 1.4 GHz; these quantities scale with source declination and frequency. We expect that about 20% of the observing time will be available to outside observers. Time will be granted based on the reviews of the proposals from the Telescope Allocation Committee. Because the telescope is still under development, observing will be done on a shared-risk basis. We strongly encourage observers to work with one of the members of the observing teams from either the Berkeley Radio Astronomy Lab or the SETI Institute. Observers are not required to go to the telescope but are encouraged to do so. The Allen Telescope Array is a joint project of the SETI Institute and the UC Berkeley Radio Astronomy Lab. The ATA is supported by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the State of California, the US Naval Observatory, and other donors. |
