Interplanetary Scintillation with the Murchison Widefield Array I: A sub-arcsecond Survey over 900 square degrees at 79 and 158 MHz

Abstract

We present the first dedicated observations of Interplanetary Scintillation (IPS) with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). We have developed a synthesis imaging technique, tailored to the properties of modern "large-N" low-frequency radio telescopes. This allows us to image the variability on IPS timescales across 900 square degrees simultaneously. We show that for our observations, a sampling rate of just 2Hz is sufficient to resolve the IPS signature of most sources. We develop tests to ensure that IPS variability is separated from ionospheric or instrumental variability. We validate our results by comparison with existing catalogues of IPS sources, and near-contemporaneous observations by other IPS facilities. Using just five minutes of data, we produce catalogues at both 79MHz and 158MHz, each containing over 350 scintillating sources. At the field centre we detect approximately one scintillating source per square degree, with a minimum scintillating flux density at 158MHz of 110mJy, corresponding to a compact flux density of approximately 400mJy. Each of these sources is a known radio source, however only a minority were previously known to contain sub-arcsecond components. We discuss our findings and the prospects they hold for future astrophysical and heliospheric studies.

Accepted for publication in MNRAS. The catalogues (Tables 2&3) in both VOTable and csv formats are made available as arxiv ancillary files

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