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Low Frequency Radio Astronomy from the Moon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2015

D.L. Jones
Affiliation:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of TechnologyMail code 238-332, 4800 Oak Grove Drive Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
K.W. Weiler
Affiliation:
Naval Research Laboratory Remote Sensing Division, Code 7214 Washington, D.C. 20375, USA

Abstract

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The radio sky at frequencies of several MHz and below is essentially unexplored with high angular resolution due to refraction and opacity in the Earth’s ionosphere. An interferometer array in space providing arcminute resolution images would allow a wide range of problems in solar, planetary, galactic, and extragalactic astronomy to be attacked. These include the evolution of solar and planetary radio bursts, interplanetary and interstellar scintillation, the distribution of low energy cosmic rays and diffuse ionized hydrogen in our galaxy, the determination of spectral turnover frequencies and magnetic field strengths in galactic and extragalactic radio sources, searches for “fossil” radio galaxies which are no longer detectable by high frequency surveys, and searches for new sources of coherent radio emission. In addition, it is likely that unexpected objects and emission processes will be discovered by such an instrument, as has often happened when high resolution observations first become possible in a new spectral region. The Moon can provide shielding from terrestrial interference (and from the Sun half of the time) and consequently the lunar farside surface offers an ideal site of a low frequency radio array.

Type
II. Joint Discussions
Copyright
Copyright © Kluwer 1998

References

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