Astronomy back-ends

This page describes the backends available for passive radio astronomy observations. Back-ends for the planetary radar and for the atmospheric science instruments are not described here.

PUPPI – The Puerto Rico Ultimate Pulsar Processing Instrument, for single-pixel pulsar observations.

The Mock Spectrometers for spectral line and pulsar observing using the full 300 MHz bandwidth of ALFA and

• single-pixel observing with 7 164 MHz boards or 14 boards with a bandwidth of 82 MHz or less in 7 independently steerable groups.

The WAPP Correlators for pulsar and spectral line observations with a 100 MHz bandwidth of ALFA.

• Also allows 4 boards of up to 100 MHz each in single-board mode and 8 boards of up to 100 MHz each in dual-board mode for single-pixel observing. (Note: there are 4 WAPP machines: ‘single-board’ and ‘dual-board’ refer to the number of boards per machine.)

The GALFA Spectrometers – for Galactic HI observations with ALFA.

The Mark5A – backend for VLBI observations.

The Interim Correlator an older single-pixel backend providing 4 boards with up-to 50 MHz bandwidth each.

Continuum Observing with the Radar Interface – it is normally advised that for continuum observations one of the spectral-line backends is used. This system is used to provide a continuum total-power record for VLBI observations.