Fast Radio Burst project

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This is our first 6-meter reflector erected across the street at the East Asian Observatory base office. The prime focus receiver at the end of the quadrapod legs houses a dual linear polarization clover leaf antenna along with a pair of LNAs and optical transmitters. The optical receivers and backend digital hardware are located in the bay seen to the right of the dish. The reflector provides 30 dB gain and a 3 dB beamwidth of 5.8 degrees  or about 11 times the angular size of the moon.  The photo was taken with my iPhone XS Max on September 12, 2022 while performing a drift scan of the sun.  

Our frequency of interest is 400 to 800 MHz and requires an RFI quiet site which we have identified in the Kau district of the Big Island. We plan to build a 10 antenna array to serve as an outrigger to the CHIME telescope located in British Columbia, Canada.  The Hawaii site will be one of three outrigger locations that include Green Bank, West Virginia, and Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario Canada.  Once online, these outriggers will increase the angular precision of FRB detections and provide further clues as to the source of these energetic radio bursts.