Special Session: Frontiers of Astronomy with the World's Largest Radio Telescope

1/10/2008 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

The Arecibo telescope is currently committed to completing a large number of surveys using its 7-pixel L-band feed (ALFA). This has a sensitivity from 1225 to 1525 MHz. That enables it to be used in making high angular-resolution studies of Galactic HI, in making continuum L-band pulsar searches for millisecond pulsars, in mapping the Arecibo sky in all four Stokes parameters, {and from the resulting measurement of rotation measures from background continuum sources, to use Faraday tomography to map the Galactic magnetic field in detail}, and to make blind HI surveys of our local cosmic environment. Much of this work will be completed in the next five years. The Observatory is now seeking to explore the science it can be applied to in the post-ALFA years, when current technical developments of low noise receivers covering a 300 MHz to 3 GHz band and multi-pixel focal phase array feeds will be available. The Arecibo Observatory convened a meeting on Frontiers of Astronomy with large single-dish radio telescopes in Washington on 12-13 September. The objective was to ultimately generate white papers on the unique science that can be done with Arecibo, ahead of the next Decadal Survey. Our emphasis is on the science that can be accomplished five to fifteen years in the future and beyond, into an era when the Square Kilometer Array project may be a competitor.

This session highlights several of the future science aspects brought forward in the meeting. The speakers will be Murray Lewis - to briefly introduce the context of the Arecibo Meeting, and the hopes of our traditional users. This will be followed by Maura McLaughlin - on radio transients and the new parameter space explored by synoptic surveys; by David Thompson - on the investigation of the radio counterparts of GLAST sources, as an example of synergies from multi-wavelength studies; by Fredrick Jenet - on Arecibo as part of a Gravitational Wave Observatory via the timing of milli-second pulsars; and by Shepard Doeleman - on the sensitivity and science enabled when Arecibo is included in the Highly Sensitive Array (VLBI).

Organizer: B. Murray Lewis, Arecibo Obs.

Speakers: