3 ms·
I saw one of these guys, Shep Doeleman, talk last year. What they do for this is nuts. They have to transport an atomic clock with them to each site, and someth
by killjoywashere 10y ago
I saw one of these guys, Shep Doeleman, talk last year. What they do for this is nuts. They have to transport an atomic clock with them to each site, and something like a 20 of the biggest helium-filled disks available in a custom machine to each site (which is somewhere crazy, like the South Pole, the top of a mountain in Chile, a volcano, etc). And run them all at the exact same time.
They end up with something like 7 PB of data and process it all down to like a 10 MB image. They then throw the rest of the data away because they can't afford the disk space for storage.
I think they have serious plans for putting a constellation of satellites around a Lagrange point.
- serg_chernata 10y agoIs there a video or audio of this talk somewhere? Sounds fascinating.
- duetosymmetry 10y agoI believe every radio telescope has their own reference clock that lives at the site. The EHT team is not responsible for schlepping these clocks around. There are other reasons besides VLBI to have really good timing at the site—for example, pulsar timing.
- killjoywashere 10y agoI think there was a question about that: they had some issues with two different standards and decided it was better to pick one type and use that at all locations even if they had to bring it up themselves.