Skymovie

This is a 24-h experiment using the first article of the Antenna Unit and the First Stage Receiver Unit (FSRU) of the EISCAT_3D at Kiruna site. The FSRU has the capability of pointing to the specified region of the sky and recording the signal from that direction. Since it is an electronic scan, it can change pointing directions rapidly, allowing us to obtain whole sky images of the galactic noise in a short time. The objective of this test was to see how stable the FSRU is in a long-term run.

This video was generated from successive measurements of five-minute intervals from 08:32 to 15:17 UTC, 2nd May 2020. The received noise powers at pointed directions are measured and drawn using the color scale. Bright radio sources are known to have higher noise powers. For example, we see the milky way at the center of the sky, Cassiopeia A, Cygnus A and the Sun depicted by markers. We also see other artificial contamination around the first article. For example, the source at NE is our house in the current EISCAT site.

Technical specifications:
Center Frequency: 233MHz
Time for acquiring a single image: ~2.4ms