The MWA is located at the Murchison Radioastronomy Observatory in Western Australia, the future site of the SKA (below). It is an interferometric radio telescope with over 2000 separate antennas arranged in 128 groups of 16. The maximum distance between antennas is approximately 3km, and the entire array has a collecting area of roughly 2000 sq. metres. Capable of conducting large surveys as well as observing discrete targets, the MWA focuses on four science themes: observing the 21cm line of neutral hydrogen from the epoch when first stars and galaxies formed; surveying the southern sky for radio emission from within MW galaxy, enabling study of our galaxy’s magnetic field; searching for transient and variable sources like pulsars, X-ray binaries and neutron stars; and monitoring “space weather” caused by activity on the Sun.
Phase 2 of the MWA has now commenced operations, which has improved the angular resolution to sub-arc-minute levels, has improved the image sensitivity by a factor of ~10, and has improved the EoR sensitivity by a factor of ~3.
In June 2016, the University of Toronto became a member of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) consortium, with a seat on the MWA Board of Partners, with former Dunlap director, Prof. Bryan Gaensler as the U of T representative.
