Pith. sign in

REVIEW

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2104.02940 v1 pith:OFTKANFD submitted 2021-04-07 astro-ph.IM astro-ph.HE

A Southern-Hemisphere all-sky radio transient monitor for SKA-Low prototype stations

classification astro-ph.IM astro-ph.HE
keywords datasystemtransientall-skyastrophysicalb0950beambeen
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

We present the first southern-hemisphere all-sky imager and radio-transient monitoring system implemented on two prototype stations of the low-frequency component of the Square Kilometre Array. Since its deployment the system has been used for real-time monitoring of the recorded commissioning data. Additionally, a transient searching algorithm has been executed on the resulting all-sky images. It uses a difference imaging technique, and has enabled identification of a wide variety of transient classes, ranging from human-made radio-frequency interference to genuine astrophysical events. Observations at the frequency 159.4 MHz and higher in a single coarse channel (0.926 MHz) were made with 2s time resolution, and multiple nights were analysed. Despite having modest sensitivity (~few Jy/beam), using a single coarse channel and 2-s imaging, the system detected bright transients from PSR B0950+08, proving that it can be used to detect bright transients of an astrophysical origin. The unusual, extreme activity of the pulsar PSR B0950+08 (up to ~155 Jy/beam) was initially detected in a "blind" search in the 2020-04-10/11 data and later assigned to this specific pulsar. The limitations of our data, however, prevent use from making firm conclusions of the effect being due to a combination of refractive and diffractive scintillation or intrinsic emission mechanisms. The system can routinely collect data over many days without interruptions; the large amount of recorded data at 159.4 and 229.7 MHz allowed us to determine a preliminary transient surface density upper limit of $1.32 \times 10^{-9} \text{deg}^{-2}$ for a timescale and limiting flux density of 2s and 42 Jy, respectively. We plan to extend the observing bandwidth to tens of MHz and improve time resolution to tens of milliseconds in order to increase the sensitivity and enable detections of Fast Radio Bursts below 300 MHz.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.