The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder: Performance of the Boolardy Engineering Test Array

Abstract

We describe the performance of the Boolardy Engineering Test Array (BETA), the prototype for the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope ASKAP. BETA is the first aperture synthesis radio telescope to use phased array feed technology, giving it the ability to electronically form up to nine dual-polarization beams. We report the methods developed for forming and measuring the beams, and the adaptations that have been made to the traditional calibration and imaging procedures in order to allow BETA to function as a multi-beam aperture synthesis telescope. We describe the commissioning of the instrument and present details of BETA's performance: sensitivity, beam characteristics, polarimetric properties and image quality. We summarise the astronomical science that it has produced and draw lessons from operating BETA that will be relevant to the commissioning and operation of the final ASKAP telescope.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in PASA

References in corpus (18)

• The Murchison Widefield Array: the Square Kilometre Array Precursor at low radio frequencies
• SUMSS: A Wide-Field Radio Imaging Survey of the Southern Sky. II. The Source Catalogue
• Science with the Square Kilometer Array: Motivation, Key Science Projects, Standards and Assumptions
• Localization and broadband follow-up of the gravitational-wave transient GW150914
• Science With The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder
• Correcting direction-dependent gains in the deconvolution of radio interferometric images
• Calibrating High-Precision Faraday Rotation Measurements for LOFAR and the Next Generation of Low-Frequency Radio Telescopes
• The MeqTrees software system and its use for third-generation calibration of radio interferometers
• The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder: System Architecture and Specifications of the Boolardy Engineering Test Array
• The HIPASS survey of the Galactic plane in Radio Recombination Lines
• A New 1.4GHz Radio Continuum Map of the Sky South of Declination +25 deg
• A search for HI absorption in nearby radio galaxies using HIPASS
• Discovery of HI gas in a young radio galaxy at $z=0.44$ using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder
• ASKAP HI imaging of the galaxy group IC 1459
• APERTIF, a focal plane array for the WSRT
• Wide-field broadband radio imaging with phased array feeds: a pilot multi-epoch continuum survey with ASKAP-BETA
• A pilot ASKAP survey of radio transient events in the region around the intermittent pulsar PSR J1107-5907
• High-velocity OH megamasers in IRAS 20100-4156: Evidence for a Supermassive Black Hole

Cited by in corpus (62)

• WALLABY -- An SKA Pathfinder HI Survey
• The detection of an extremely bright fast radio burst in a phased array feed survey
• High time resolution and polarisation properties of ASKAP-localised fast radio bursts
• The spectral properties of the bright FRB population
• A Flare-Type IV Burst Event from Proxima Centauri and Implications for Space Weather
• Discovery of an Extremely Short Duration Flare from Proxima Centauri Using Millimeter through FUV Observations
• Primary beam effects of radio astronomy antennas -- II. Modelling the MeerKAT L-band beam
• An ASKAP search for a radio counterpart to the first high-significance neutron star-black hole merger LIGO/Virgo S190814bv
• On the dynamics of the Small Magellanic Cloud through high-resolution ASKAP HI observations
• A circular polarisation survey for radio stars with the Australian SKA Pathfinder
• Cold gas outflows from the Small Magellanic Cloud traced with ASKAP
• Constraining the Cosmic Baryon Distribution with Fast Radio Burst Foreground Mapping
• A population analysis of pulse broadening in ASKAP Fast Radio Bursts
• Early Science from POSSUM: Shocks, turbulence, and a massive new reservoir of ionised gas in the Fornax cluster
• Illuminating the past 8 billion years of cold gas towards two gravitationally lensed quasars
• The Gravity Collective: A Search for the Electromagnetic Counterpart to the Neutron Star-Black Hole Merger GW190814
• Radio fossils, relics, and haloes in Abell 3266: cluster archaeology with ASKAP-EMU and the ATCA
• WALLABY Early Science - II. The NGC 7232 galaxy group
• The First Large Absorption Survey in HI (FLASH): I. Science Goals and Survey Design
• The ASKAP-EMU Early Science Project: 888 MHz Radio Continuum Survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Deep Investigation of Neutral Gas Origins (DINGO): HI stacking experiments with early science data
• Direction Dependent Corrections in Polarimetric Radio Imaging I : Characterizing the effects of the primary beam on full Stokes imaging
• The ASKAP-EMU Early Science Project:Radio Continuum Survey of the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Fast Radio Burst Dispersion Measure Distribution as a Probe of Helium Reionization
• A successful search for intervening 21 cm HI absorption in galaxies at 0.4 < z <1.0 with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP)
• Connecting X-ray absorption and 21cm neutral hydrogen absorption in obscured radio AGN
• A Survey of the Galactic Plane for Dispersed Pulses with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder
• The Performance and Calibration of the CRAFT Fly's Eye Fast Radio Burst Survey
• WALLABY Early Science - I. The NGC 7162 Galaxy Group
• WALLABY Pre-Pilot Survey: HI Content of the Eridanus Supergroup
• Serendipitous Discovery of PSR J1431-6328 as a Highly-Polarized Point Source with the Australian SKA Pathfinder
• ASKAP observations of multiple rapid scintillators reveal a degrees-long plasma filament
• An ASKAP survey for HI absorption towards dust-obscured quasars
• High-resolution Observations of Low-luminosity Gigahertz-Peaked Spectrum and Compact Steep Spectrum Sources
• Scalable precision wide-field imaging in radio interferometry: I. uSARA validated on ASKAP data
• Blazar jet evolution revealed by multi-epoch broadband radio polarimetry
• The MeerKAT Fornax Survey IV. A close look at the cluster physics through the densest rotation measure grid
• Direction Dependent Corrections in Polarimetric Radio Imaging II: A-Solver Methodology A low-order solver for the A-Term of the A-Projection algorithm
• A statistical measurement of the HI spin temperature in DLAs at cosmological distances
• Observing Pulsars with a Phased Array Feed at the Parkes Telescope
• Robust profile decomposition for large extragalactic spectral-line surveys
• FLASH Pilot Survey: Detections of associated 21 cm HI absorption in GAMA galaxies at 0.42 < z <1.00
• An Iterative Reconstruction Algorithm for Faraday Tomography
• Radio detections of IR-selected runaway stellar bow shocks
• GalaPy, the highly optimised C++/Python spectral modelling tool for galaxies -- I. Library presentation and photometric fitting
• Collimation of the kiloparsec-scale radio jets in NGC 2663
• FRB Line-of-sight Ionization Measurement From Lightcone AAOmega Mapping Survey: the First Data Release
• Interference Mitigation with a Modified ASKAP Phased Array Feed on the 64 m Parkes Radio Telescope
• A search for fast radio burst-like emission from Fermi gamma-ray bursts
• WALLABY Pilot Survey: Hydra Cluster Galaxies UV and HI morphometrics
• Message in a Bottle: Unveiling the Magneto-Ionic Complexity of AGNs through the Stokes QU-Fitting Technique
• Characterising the Apertif primary beam response
• A depolarizing HI tidal tail in the western lobe of Fornax A
• The Impact of the Environment of White Dwarf Mergers on Fast Radio Bursts
• MeerKAT reveals a ghostly thermal radio ring towards the Galactic Centre
• A 600 kpc complex radio source at the center of Abell 3718 discovered by the EMU and POSSUM surveys
• Wavelets and sparsity for Faraday tomography
• System equivalent flux density of Stokes I, Q, U, V of a polarimetric interferometer
• Relighting the fire in Hickson Compact Group (HCG) 15: magnetised fossil plasma revealed by the SKA Pathfinders & Precursors
• Upcoming SKA precursor surveys and sensitivity to HI mass function
• MOSS I: Double radio relics in the Saraswati supercluster
• Deep ASKAP EMU Survey of the GAMA23 field: Properties of radio sources