8/31/2007
Collaborators in the EXPReS project (Express Production Real-time e-VLBI Service) conducted the first successful e-VLBI observations to jointly use telescopes in China and Australia, China and Europe, and for a brief period Australia and Europe. The data were transported via lightpaths by among others SURFnet.
e-VLBI, or real-time, electronic very long baseline interferometry, is a technique by which widely separated radio telescopes simultaneously observe the same region of sky, and data from each telescope are sent in real-time to a central correlator via high-speed communication networks. The correlator is a purpose-built supercomputer which analyzes the data to allow researchers to map the sky. The correlator can produce data with up to one hundred times better resolution than the best optical telescopes. In other words, this technique creates a virtual single telescope with an observing area equal to the distances separating the actual telescopes.
Data were transferred to JIVE at a rate of 256 Mbps per telescope. The Australian Mopra telescope was connected directly to JIVE through a dedicated 1-Gbps lightpath set up by the Australian, Canadian and Dutch national research and education networks (NRENs) AARNet, CANARIE and SURFnet, respectively. The Sheshan telescope was for the first time connected via the Chinese NRENs CSTNET and CERNET, the new high speed route across Siberia provided by the EC-sponsored ORIENT and TEIN2 networks, the pan-European GÉANT2 network and finally SURFNet. Most of the European telescopes have been connected for some time via dedicated lightpaths provided by the GÉANT2 partners.
The press release can be found at:
http://www.expres-eu.org/ShAuEu_fringes.html
A map with all involved telescopes can be viewed at:
http://www.expres-eu.org/PHOTOS/evlbi_map_300dpi.jpg