Observing the Sun with the Murchison Widefield Array

TL;DR

This paper discusses the capabilities of the Murchison Widefield Array in capturing detailed, high-resolution images of the Sun's complex and rapidly changing radio emissions across a broad spectrum, overcoming previous imaging challenges.

Contribution

It presents early results demonstrating the MWA's ability to observe the Sun with high temporal, spectral, and spatial resolution, advancing solar radio imaging techniques.

Findings

Successful imaging of the Sun's complex emission features

Demonstration of high time and frequency resolution capabilities

Early observational results from routine MWA solar observations

Abstract

The Sun has remained a difficult source to image for radio telescopes, especially at the low radio frequencies. Its morphologically complex emission features span a large range of angular scales, emission mechanisms involved and brightness temperatures. In addition, time and frequency synthesis, the key tool used by most radio interferometers to build up information about the source being imaged is not effective for solar imaging, because many of the features of interest are short lived and change dramatically over small fractional bandwidths. Building on the advances in radio frequency technology, digital signal processing and computing, the kind of instruments needed to simultaneously capture the evolution of solar emission in time, frequency, morphology and polarization over a large spectral span with the requisite imaging fidelity, and time and frequency resolution have only recently begun to appear. Of this class of instruments, the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is best suited for solar observations. The MWA has now entered a routine observing phase and here we present some early examples from MWA observations.