LAM seminar by Matt Dobbs : “Overview of the Canadian Hydrogen Observatory and Radio Transient Detector (CHORD) project”

Title: Overview of the Canadian Hydrogen Observatory and Radio Transient Detector (CHORD) project

Abstract:

The CHORD telescope is now being commissioned at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia. Observing the sky in drift-scan mode adjacent to the wide-field CHIME instrument, CHORD provides a deep view of the radio transient sky. Its precision composite dishes provide a clean, highly redundant beam that will allow exquisite control of systematics and excellent foreground subtraction for 21cm intensity mapping. CHORD provides an order-of-magnitude improvement in sensitivity over its predecessor, CHIME, by doubling the collecting area, increasing the bandwidth to 300-1500 MHz, and reducing the system noise to less than 50 Kelvin. The CHORD core array consists of 512 six-meter dishes and will be complemented by two 64-dish outrigger stations located at Hat Creek and Green Bank. I will show performance results from CHORD’s first fringes with several dishes operational and present the milestones and science targets for the full CHORD project.